


Digimon re:CONNECT

by Glitchgoat



Category: Digimon - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Digimon Fan Series, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Illustrated, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-07 16:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 231,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10364652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitchgoat/pseuds/Glitchgoat
Summary: Fifteen years ago, the Digital World's connection to the real world was severed in order to quarantine the spread of an all-consuming corruption. Fifteen years ago, a handful of digimon emerged in the human world with no memory of who they were, only the knowledge that they couldn't go back.Original characters and fan-made digimon in a standalone universe; structured like an original season of the franchise.





	1. Episode 01: Once More Unto the Breach

**Author's Note:**

> So I wasn't going to mirror this here, but... eh, someone told me I should, and I desperately need validation and attention, so here we go!  
> This is a mirror! The "official" version of this fic is hosted at recon.digimonreset.com -- there's all kinds of (bad) art, profiles, supplemental information, character playlists... the whole she-bang. Go check it out! No, I do not want to talk about how much brain juice I've put into the creation of this thing! (No lie-- this mofo is over four years coming.)
> 
> Going forward: this is an original-character centric she-bang. It's a fanseries type of deal, meaning it's structured and set up like an anime series. If big dumb fights with monsters calling their attacks isn't your style, don't say I didn't warn you.
> 
> We've got the first three chapters right out the gate; theoretically I'm going to be updating this monster (ha) twice a month -- the updates will be on the first and the fifteenth on the site, and one day after on fic archives. This is, of course, radically pretending that I will be able to actually keep this update schedule going consistently, but it's fun to dream.
> 
> AND AWAAAAY WE GO.

A thin silver of crescent moon peeked out from behind a wall of clouds. It was a beautiful night in the merry month of May; the air was warm, tempered by a gentle breeze. In the distance, lights twinkled and cars rumbled; the downtown of Atlas Park was coming to life as Friday night was underway.

That is not where we pick up the story.

Where we pick up the story is one girl who was having no part of any of the downtown. Natalie Green sat perched on the roof of her family's apartment building, legs dangling off the side and the backs of her rubber-heeled sneakers bouncing off the brick.   
Natalie was a girl of average height and decent grades and average-enough circumstances, with shortish ginger hair and eyesight that would warrant she wear glasses more often than she did. She had a few freckles on the back of her left knee and was mildly allergic to tomatoes; she chipped a tooth in the third grade and often got mad at other drivers while in her car.   
She was, of course, rather extraordinary in other ways, though; for instance, her best friend was quite unique.

You see, seated next to her on the roof, sitting behind the wall rather than on top of it, was a large-- well. Not quite a bird? He had a bird-like silhouette despite his lack of wings, yes, and he had talon-like hands and feet, and black feathers all over his body... but 'bird' would fall quite short of describing him. His skin -- as he was bare from the elbows to his hands and his knees to his feet -- was lilac; a frill of longer, darker feathers sat around his neck, and even-longer feathers of the same shade formed his tail, which was oddly rigid and bent obtustely. He had bandages wrapped around his upper arms, for reasons that were hard to discern.

But all of this is a distraction; the most remarkable thing about him was that his face appeared to be covered by a plague doctor's mask, complete with a thin black strap running around the back of his head. It was white, with a long beak and big black eyes with curious white pupils. It seemed to be a mask, but he could blink and furrow his brow and he had a mouth, just not one that was terribly apparent until he actually spoke.   
This was Raumon-- Natalie's oldest friend, closest confidant, and most jealously-kept secret.

(To everyone that wasn't in her family, anyway. It's kind of hard to hide a small-child-sized bird from your parents for, uh, fifteen years.)

Natalie turned and craned her neck to look at her feathered compatriot. He'd been acting slightly out of sorts lately; Natalie herself had been busy, and even now, she felt a lingering sort of unease. Her finals week had just concluded earlier that day, and she had barely had the time to do anything but study and regret her life choices. These precious few days were her chance to unwind before she began whatever summer job would hire her --   
(Look, it had been a busy semester, and she had totally spaced out on applying ahead of time, okay?)   
\-- but she still felt a curious ball of stress in her stomach. She knew one way to at least ease it, though, if not totally cure it.

"Hey. You wanna go down to the bridge?" she asked, and watched the ear-like clusters of feathers on Raumon's head prick up as she spoke.

"Sure," Raumon said without a moment of delay, scratching at his face idly.

Night was, for self-evident reasons, the only time that they (or, rather, Raumon) could leave the apartment; even though Atlas Park never really went quiet, if you knew where to go, you could find secluded places under cover of darkness without too much of a trouble.

 

***

The door on the roof led right down into her family's apartment on the top floor. They passed Natalie's sisters' bedroom (twins, you see, and young enough that sharing a room until Natalie moved out wasn't too terrible a prospect), down the hall past the other bedroom, and stopped just short of the living room. Natalie peered around the lip of the doorway; her parents were watching some terrible B-movie-- the kind of drek that nobody with an ounce of self-respect would watch.

Of course, she recognized instantly that it was _50-Foot Squid Monsters vs. The City of Cleveland_.

Natalie mouthed along with a few lines of badly-acted, stilted dialogue, while Raumon mimed along with the actors on-screen, because they both knew the film by rote.

Of course.

"We're going out to the park," Natalie said after a moment, once there was a gap in the script. (Didn't want them to miss any vital plot developments, after all.) "We'll be back in a bit, unless we get hit by a car or something."

"Noted," her father said, not taking his attention away from the television, with his typical level of engagement. Natalie occasionally contemplated saying she was doing something outlandish, like running away to join the circus or to get a tattoo on her forehead, to see if he'd respond any more.

Nonetheless, Natalie plucked her car keys off of the ring. With Raumon hot on her heels, the pair set out the front door. They gingerly crept down the four flights of stairs that led down to ground level, not wanting to alert the neighbors by galumphing down at high speed. Sure, they knew that they had absolutely no chance of being evicted -- it was her parents' apartment building, as in they owned the building... but Raumon would be a hard pill to swallow if any neighbors peeked their heads out to see what was the matter.

Oh, and also it'd be rude to be loud, but that wasn't quite as high a priority, you know? Gotta keep those priorities in order.

Raumon practically dove into the bushes once they hit the ground floor as one of the tenants poked his head out to take out his garbage; luckily the dumpster was close-by, so even though Natalie kept walking so as not to look suspicious, Raumon didn't have far to catch up.   
Within a few scant seconds, Raumon was clambering into shotgun in Natalie's car, and he was far more at-ease as he buckled in. He was short enough that, even sitting shotgun, someone would have to be standing right next to the car and looking in to spot him.

"All good?" Natalie asked as she got into the driver's side; her avian-esque friend gave her a thumbs-up, and they were off, comfortable in silence and not needing to fill it with small talk. ... okay, more the latter than the former; Raumon turned on the radio.

Their destination was in the city park; it was up relatively close to the Harper River, a little ways north of Natalie's apartment building. It was only about twenty minutes away assuming no outstanding traffic congestion, which for some godawful reason, did sometimes happen.

The park was a green oasis in a city that was rapidly developing every spare inch of land; the stream that they were headed to, a tiny offshoot of the much bigger river nearby, cut through one side of the park, and was fairly close to the parking lot that Natalie pulled into. It was bordered on either side by tall trees, the remnants of an old grove that once stood near the edge of town. They towered over the lazy water's surace, providing a natural ceiling of sorts and dropping stray leaves. On nights that the moon was fuller, it would shine beams down through the gaps; on a night like tonight, the only illumination came from the sparse street-lamps that intermittently lined the concrete walkways that zigzagged through the park.   
This, paired with the dense foliage, provided plenty of cover for Raumon to run ahead into and wait until Natalie caught up, walking at more natural a speed.

A very old wood and metal bridge stretched across the water at a relatively narrow point, and it is on this structure that Natalie and Raumon convened. They came here relatively often, when Natalie had the time; sometimes they came to sit and think, sometimes they merely came to avoid the claustrophobia of staying inside, and sometimes they came to pretend, if only for a short time, that they didn't live somewhere quite so intensely developed and industrial.   
It also had a degree of sentimental value, but, you know, that was just a bonus.

"I've been going crazy cooped up inside," Raumon said, stretching out his arms and legs in turn like he was doing a careful inventory of himself.

"I know, I know," Natalie said with an apologetic little shrug.

"I know, I know," Raumon said, in exactly the same tone of voice -- not to mock her, but just because he had picked up the tic from her, "you've been busy. Too busy to spend an hour or two doing absolutely nothing with me. I'm so very slighted and offended," Raumon said, putting a claw to his forehead like he might just swoon. Natalie smirked and shook her head.

"I'm a terrible friend."

"Just the worst."

They kept straight faces for a good ten seconds before both of them began to laugh. It felt good to be outside instead of studying (in Natalie's case) or simply just stuck inside (in Raumon's).

"Really, though. You been feeling alright?" Natalie asked, looking over at the bird as she leaned forward on the railing of the bridge.

"Yes?" he ventured, but his voice was unsure. Perhaps he was just feeling cooped up; that was how he was chalking up the slightly uneasy feeling in his gut. So be it that he'd been cooped up a dozen times in the past few years for one reason or another and he'd never felt like this before.   
Natalie squinted at him; she wasn't buying it, and he knew it.   
"I don't know," he said after a second delay, and he tapped a claw to his beak. "You know that feeling when you know something's happened and you're waiting with bated breath for someone to tell you about it?"

"Right," Natalie said, nodding. The both of them had historically had fairly reliable gut feelings, and they always seemed to settle in within the day, if not mere hours, of something coming out of left field, whether it be as simple as predicting that Natalie's mom would forget to run to the bank on her way home to Raumon's prediction, a mere 24 hours prior, that Natalie's then-boyfriend would show his particularly douchey true colours soon.

"I've been feeling like that. Like something's really off." He spoke apprehensively, not sure if he was making sense, or if this was worth bringing up at all; he was a bit taken aback, but pleasantly so, when Natalie's shoulders slumped with a sigh of relief.

"So it's not just me, then?" she said, miming wiping sweat off of her forehead with the back of her hand.

"Not just you," he said, and he too slumped his shoulders with the release of that uncertain tension-- or, at least, some of it. "I should have figured you'd catch on too."

"I don't know what it is," she said, stretching out and looking towards the direction of the parking lot, where they had just walked. "I was thinking it might just be the college thing. But unless I've missed something, you're not doing online classes or sneaking out to the college," (Raumon chuckled at this), "so why would you feel it too?"

Raumon nodded; he remembered full well the way, after graduating from high school, his friend had woken up in a cold sweat more than once in the following week, and convinced of the delusion that she must have some project to complete or a test to study for. He looked up at Natalie, scanning her face and her body language; she had turned back to look at him, her hands on her hips, weight shifted onto one foot.

"Psychic brain worms?" he suggested after a moment of thought, gesturing vaguely with one purple claw.

"May as well be," she said with a heavy sigh, looking up at the sky through the shifting canopy of leaves.

Somehow, neither of them felt any less confused about that uneasy feeling settling in their stomachs, but it was at least something to know that they both felt it. Was that a comfort, though? If they both felt it, didn't that mean that something was probably about to happen, or was that just confirmation bias?

Raumon, feeling the itch to move, half-clambered up onto the wall of the bridge, not quite able to pull himself up all the way but hoisting himself up sufficiently to look over the side.

"Is something up?" Natalie asked, following his eyeline.

There was a beat of silence, before he answered: "I thought maybe I might see something if I got up here, but I think I'm just hurting my arms."

Natalie smiled and picked Raumon up, hands under his armpits, to set him on top of the wall proper. He puffed his chest-feathers in appreciation as he took a seat on the top of the rail, while Natalie leaned forward and rested her arms.

They stayed there for another fifteen minutes more; they talked about the news that Raumon had read while Natalie was taking her tests, and about maybe getting something from a drive-through on the way back home (Raumon, of course, would have to hide in the back). They didn't fill the space, though; they were perfectly content to take advantage of the stillness.   
(They didn't know, at the time, how little they'd get to do so in the very near future.)   
The wind rustled the trees, the water ran beneath them, and every now and then, a bat would swoop down to snap up a mosquito from the water's surface, but nothing gave either of them cause for alarm.

The silence and the stillness were broken when Natalie snapped her head up. She saw a light in the distance, accompanied by the whir of bicycle wheels -- someone was riding their bike through the park at the ripe hour of nine-thirty at night, for some godforsaken reason.   
"Someone's coming," she said in a hushed, urgent tone, and tapped Raumon on the shoulder gently.

What she meant was for this to be a signal for them to go. Unfortunately, Raumon was a bit lost in thought; the gentle tap was a rude awakening, and instead of being gently roused, he half-squawked, half-squeaked, and jerked forward.

He flailed his arms around in circles; Natalie wouldn't dare say it, but in her head, the only word that came to mind was _timber_. A couple slow-motion seconds and one large splash later, and they had a very soggy bird on their hands.   
Or in the stream.   
Mostly in the stream.

The passing night-cyclist cast Natalie a very strange look as she half-hoisted herself over the lip of the bridge, trying very hard to stifle a giggle, but they presumably suspected nothing.

Raumon re-emerged with a gentle _bloop_ a few seconds later and he began to spit water out of his mouth, but aside from being wet and maybe a little muddy, he seemed fairly unharmed.

"You know," he said, and though he was drenched his tone was quite dry, "there are more effective ways to warn me when someone is coming." Luckily, the water wasn't too deep nor quick-moving, and it was a short paddle back to the bank. A few moments to shake some of the water out of his feathers and he was trotting back up to rejoin Natalie on the bridge.

"We're both lucky that I don't care if you get my car wet," Natalie said blithely, smiling at her soggy friend, "or I'd hang you up to dry for a few hours before we went home. Come on. Let's get a cheeseburger or ten," she said, beginning to walk back to her car. Raumon was quick to follow, doing an awkward hop-skip every few strides to shake more water off of his limbs, but he cast a look over his shoulder.

He should have waited just a second more to look back; the moment he turned away, a shape in the dark shimmer and shifted in the trees, a dark-hued _something_ visible for just a second before it faded away.

They didn't think twice of the way the streetlamps flickered.

 

***

In the corner of Natalie's room, there was a square of about two and a half feet by two and a half feet, between the foot of Natalie's bed and the wall, that was designated space for Raumon. It was mostly a nest of blankets and pillows on a large bean-bag chair, but many of his other belongings were buried strategically-- a little chest full of feathers and trinkets, a scrapbook full of pressed flowers, books he had borrowed and had Natalie buy for him, candies, candy wrappers, all sorts of little things.

When they had moved into and taken ownership of this building many years back, her parents had offered him his own space, but he had declined, perfectly happy to share space with Natalie. Indeed, while it was nominally "Natalie's Room", it was really more of _Raumon and Natalie's room_. The strange bird creature had been a part of their family for fifteen years-- though, admittedly, he had looked different when they first met. He was older than Natalie's sisters, even; they had had plenty of time to adjust.

This of course did make it a bit problematic whenever Alexis and Madison, said younger sisters, had friends over, but this was solved easily enough by having Nat and Raumon sequester in their room whenever visitors were about.

Luckily enough, they were perfectly content to do that whether there were visitors or not. In fact, this is exactly what they did when they returned to the apartment at nearly ten-thirty PM.   
Raumon was still soggy, but he had been placated by an offering of a milkshake and a chicken sandwich, the former of which he held in both hands now, seated comfortably in his aforementioned blanket nest. The latter had already been eaten on the drive back. (He didn't strictly _need_ food, he had explained once, but food was tasty, and he liked eating it, so he was going to continue eating it. Natalie, having a hard time with the idea of a living thing that didn't need food, basically assumed that he would participate in every meal.)

The film that Natalie's parents had been watching had reached its conclusion; apparently, it was a marathon event, as _50 Foot Squid Monsters vs. The City of Omaha_ was starting up in its stead. (The sequel, you see.) Natalie knew this not because she had actually stayed out in the living room, but because her own TV was switched to the same station, and glorious B-movie cheese was providing background noise as she scrolled mindlessly through her social media. Beside her on the bed, Raumon was reading through Natalie's copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ for the fifteenth time in between sips of his milkshake.

Pretty standard night.

So standard, in fact, that when it was disturbed by a loud _THUNK!_ from the roof, Natalie almost jumped out of her chair. She didn't really, of course, but she _did_ get quite a start-- enough that the fact that the power browned out for a half-a-second and the way her television screen distorted momentarily went almost unnoticed. Raumon was looking just as startled as she was, looking up at the ceiling as though he might be able to see through it if he looked hard enough.

"What the hell," Natalie blurted out, furrowing her brow.

She didn't get an answer-- quite the opposite, in fact; she heard crunching, heavy foosteps, like someone with no concept of downstairs neighbors was stomping around on gravel. The self-evident problem: top floor. Anyone stomping upstairs was on the roof.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Raumon said wryly, because he just had to, and he was just about to ask if they should go take a look, when Natalie's mother's voice drifted through the door.

"Nat, dear, would you mind taking a look? It sounds like something fell over."

Natalie pulled one side of her mouth back in a not-quite-a-grimace and shrugged one shoulder as if to say _well, there's your answer_ \-- though she noted that it seemed that her mother didn't hear the footsteps, and that did nothing to set her at ease.

"This is how people die in bad movies," she said, but she shook her head in resignation. "Let's go check it out." The bird nodded back, gingerly setting his milkshake aside and putting a bookmark to keep his place. In a moment, he was hopping off his friend's bed and onto his feet.

As an afterthought and a precaution, Natalie pulled the old wooden baseball bat out of her closet and hoisted it up over her shoulder before she began the trek down the hall and towards the stairs. She could hear, through the cracked-open door, her sisters wondering what the ever-loving crap had just happened.

 

***

A pair of wings beat rhythmlessly against the air as boots clomped on concrete, ducking down back alleys and side streets, careful to avoid streetlamps and any sign of other human life.

"You had better be sure of this or I'mma be pissed."

"If it isn't what I think it is, I'll eat the pudding you've had in the back of the fridge since Easter."

"Your point?"

"Easter of last year."

"Hm."

"... ... oh, come on, buddy bear! Trust me! It might be dangerous, but we may be the only ones who stand a chance, you know? I mean, come on. What are the odds there's anyone else?"

"Don't call me buddy bear."

 

***

Natalie and Raumon trekked up the stairs that led up to the roof, careful, quiet. They weren't quite sure what to expect when they opened the door; maybe it was really just something that got knocked over?   
(What could have gotten knocked over that would sound like that, though?)

Call it wishful thinking, because whatever they expected, it sure wasn't what they actually saw; Natalie opened the door and felt the intense urge to slam it immediately.

See, standing in the middle of the roof, looking like it was trying to dig through the roofing to absolutely no avail, was-- well. Not a _person_ , but one could be forgiven for making that assumption at first glance.

It was tall, and roughly human shaped-- more or less. Huge clawed dragon feet and long ears kind of ruined the illusion. What skin was visible in the moonlight looked kind of blueish, but admittedly, there wasn't a lot to see; it wore a white tank-top and ragged grey pants, and more importantly (and vastly more unnervingly), its face was covered by a white mask.   
Two long horns curved up from the mask's forehead, and dark purple marks were under what were either eyes or marks made to look like eyes, but that was as many distinctive features as it had. It had long shaggy red hair that grew out from under the mask, and belts made of green thorny vines cross-crossed across its chest, which held on its back--

Bizzarrely, a blue teddy bear?

There wasn't much time to look at that, though; far more important were the heavy wooden gauntlets that covered its forearms, matching the wooden swords it held, one in each hand.

The reason Natalie nearly slammed the door wasn't just that she saw a strange humanoid thing on her roof-- no, it was the fact that the moment after she opened the door, the strange humanoid thing lifted its head and stared at her and Raumon just behind her, unblinkingly.

She stood there for a moment, her mouth hanging slightly open-- she barely noticed that Raumon's brow was furrowed, his eyes squinting, his feathers standing up on end.

"A Yasyamon?" he said, more of a question to himself than an explanation for Natalie. He felt tense all of a sudden, like his body was preparing to spring into action-- without his permission.

The human-like creature -- Yasyamon? - tilted its head, and boy oh boy, did it move in a way that didn't look natural. Its body was slightly limp, its torso lolling back and its head rolling when it moved like its neck couldn't support the weight of its head. Its gaze focused on Raumon, practically looking through Natalie.

"What the--?" Natalie began, frowning slightly as Yasyamon began to move its arms. It lifted both of its wooden swords above its head, striking a bizarre tableau before it yelled only two words--

"Double Strike!"

With a brilliant flash of light, it was no longer holding two swords, but rather one, held above its head with both hands. Its blade was no longer wooden, but wicked-sharp steel, and it glowed like a beacon in the dark of the night.

"WHAAAAT THE HELL," Natalie said in a frantic yelp before she could stop herself, nearly dropping her baseball bat-- but it was a lucky thing that she didn't. In the blink of an eye, the blue creature leapt forward, swinging its blade, and aiming right at Raumon. Before she knew what she was doing, Natalie held the bat out horozontally, using it to try and stop the sword. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Raumon dive to the side-- and then, back in front of her, the bat was nearly snapped in half, held together only by the thinnest of splinters.

Just as soon as she looked, though, she could see that Yasyamon's sword had separated back into two wooden ones the moment it had hit the bat.

As Natalie saw all this, Raumon saw his chance.

Acting on instinct and not reason, Raumon reared one hand back and it was immediately engulfed in a strange purplish glow.   
"Symptom Claw!" he yelled, slashing out at Yasyamon's leg. He struck true, catching Yasyamon in the left shin. He tore two long rips in the thing's pant leg and sliced into his leg proper, as well; when Raumon's claws struck flesh, the glow seeped out of his hand and into the cuts it left behind.

Yasyamon snarled and stumbled backwards, glaring at Raumon and it resumed a fighting stance.

"What are you _doing_?" Natalie asked, a bit breathlessly, a bit shell-shocked. She never wanted her face to be that close to the business end of a sword again.

"Haven't the foggiest," Raumon answered truthfully; he would have given his friend a distressed look if not for the fact that he was totally unwilling to look away from Yasyamon. Understandable, really. "What do you want?" he said to the stranger, louder than he spoke to Natalie. He was trying to sound brave, unflapped, but Natalie could see him pull his hand back in case he had to attack again.

"I found you," Yasyamon said, as though that was any kind of explanation, "and I'm not going back without you! Double Strike!"   
Yasyamon lifted his swords once again; a flash of light replaced his weapons, once again; and he lunged at Raumon, once again, swinging his weapon down as he did-- and he hit true.

Raumon was simply not able to take a hit from Yasyamon's sword straight-on, and even though he was preparing to counterattack, the stranger moved faster. Even though the blade looked sharp, it had a more concussive effect, sending Raumon tumbling head over heels backwards into the knee-high concrete wall that bordered the roof.

"Raumon!" Natalie cried out, stumbling to her feet and rushing to her friend's side, dropping the halves of the baseball bat as she did so. He was dazed; he had hit his head on the wall. Yasyamon was advancing with no regards for the girl in his way; he began to lift his weapons again.

This was the turning point.

A single powerful gust of wind blew past, strong as a hurricane. Overhead, a couple streaks of light arced across the moon-lit sky-- and one of the beams of light shot down into Natalie's hand, where it began to coalesce. Even Yasyamon -- thankfully enough -- paused in confusion.

It swirled and spun, gaining mass very quickly. It took on a purplish glow, not unlike Raumon's hand had a moment before. Within mere seconds, there was a small device in Natalie's hands where there had been nothing before.

It was almost like a phone or an Mp3 player; it was sleek and rectangular, the size of a small smartphone. Its corners were rounded off, and the back was heavy-duty black rubber. Its faceplate was two different shades of purple, with a few small buttons on the left-hand side-- three rectangular-ish yellow ones, and a circle split into two buttons and a third center button. On the far end from the buttons, a tiny silver charm dangled on a thin silver chain attached to the device.   
Most of its face was taken up by a shiny black screen; it was very shiny, looked quite new, and was completely, utterly lifeless.

Though she didn't know it yet, this little doohickey was a digivice, and in many ways, it was about to turn the tide. A lot of tides. A whole lot of tides.

You know what this absolutely did not do?   
Make Natalie any less confused. In fact, it compounded the questions she had severalfold. If she had known what it was, of course, she would have felt a powerful sense of relief, but she didn't, so she felt no such thing.   
"What the hell, what the hell, whaaaat the hell?" Natalie did her best broken record impression, looking frantically from the thing in her hand to Raumon to--

Actually, you know what it did do?   
It gave Yasyamon pause. Yasyamon was watching Natalie, his head tilted just barely to the side.   
"Hm."

"What is that?" Raumon groaned as he pulled himself up to his feet, a little bit dazed from his sudden familiarity with the concrete wall.

"Double Strike!" Yasyamon yelled as a fantastic interruption, and for the third time his swords began to glow and combine above his head. Before Raumon could intersect, Yasyamon attacked again-- but this time, he was aiming for Natalie.

Natalie only barely avoided yelling with panic. She threw up her arms in front of her as a last ditch attempt to protect her face, if nothing else. Raumon was already making to leap in the way.

She didn't expect this to work.

See, the thing was this: the sword hit the device that she gripped in her hand, and it was as though Yasyamon's sword was wooden once more and had tried to hack through a wrought iron shield. It stopped cold, and a loud metallic _clangk!_ rang out in the night air. The hit resonated through the little gadget and into Natalie, making her bones shake.

Yasyamon stumbled backwards, his swords separating. He was clearly as surprised as either of them-- all three of them stared in Natalie's hands, the digivice began to glow.

It was different from the light that had formed it; purple light began to swirl around it, and around Natalie's hand. The screen flickered to life; a rush of strange characters rushed across the display, far too fast and far too much for Natalie to make heads or tails of-- and it began to make _the most ungodly noise_ , like the sound of a thousand dial-up modems and a thousand out-of-service fax machines meeting in the middle to knock each other's circuits out.   
Very melodic.

The bright side to this was a literal bright side-- the purple light swirling around the digivice was suddenly starting to swirl around Raumon. It started around his hands, and then worked up his arms and began to engulf him.   
He didn't know exactly what was going on, no, but he knew that this was something good. The same could not be said of Natalie, who was having an extremely bad night thus far and was not looking forward to more surprises.

So, you know, imagine her sense of unease when Raumon, surrounded by this light, began to change.

 

"Raumon, Drive Evolve to..."

What happened next happened over the course of mere seconds.   
He grew taller, more humanlike; his body enlongated until he was well over a foot taller than Natalie. Appearing from nowhere, a long, tattered black coat draped over his body, with sleeves that came several inches past the tips of his clawed fingertips. His skin was grey; admittedly, not much was visible, as the coat covered most of him, aided by a large, loose collar of fabric resting around his neck to cover the lower part of his face and his neck. Long silvery hair replaced the feathers on his head, tied into a loose ponytail.   
Tall steel-toed black boots covered his feet, and a wide-brimmed, flat hat rested on his head. His beaked mask shrunk in size, covering only the top half of his face (though, as stated, his jacket covered the rest), and was now two-toned, black on his right and staying white on the left, with two purple streaks running down the cheeks.

Once he had formed fully, he threw his arm out to the side, and procured a staff from thin air. It was wooden, and topped with a tremendous red jewel. Strapped to the gem were a pair of white bird masks, quite like his usual face, though one's expression was sorrowful, and the other angry. He flourished this new weapon before folding his arms. He spoke quietly, his voice serene and solemn-- though not much deeper, and still having the timbre it usually had.   
"Doctorimon!"

 

"WHAAAAT THE FUCK."   
That was courtesy of Natalie, if you couldn't tell.

(Look. The last time Raumon had changed, it had been -- ... not nearly so severe or dramatic? He had been a little bouncing black ball with feathers and no mouth, but he had grown up into the Raumon they knew now a little more than a year ago. He had explained it like a butterfly pupating, but--   
Had Raumon just changed for good again?)

Raumon -- pardon, Doctorimon -- looked down at Natalie, who sat flabberghasted. She still gripped the digivice in her hands and stared at him, her jaw hanging slowly slack. He tilted his head just so, such that she could see a faint, thin smile.

She felt... uneasy, yes, but a little more reassured.

Just a little, though.

He turned his attention back to Yasyamon, and his demeanor changed entirely-- he seemed detached, severe.   
"I don't know what you want from us," he said; he didn't need to speak above a whisper to sound intimidating and imposing, "but you won't have it."

"I'm not leaving without--!" Yasyamon spat, and he began to lift his weapons, but this time, Rau-- _Doctorimon_ was quicker on the draw.

"Black Bloom!" he said, and from within his tattered sleeves, his hand (still a purple talon, just like Raumon's) was now holding a strange black rose that glinted in the moonlight. He did not hesitate; he swiped it down through the air, and in its wake, it released a shower of razor-sharp black petals that shot at Yasyamon like bullets.

Yasyamon snarled and twirled his swords. Even as the attack pushed him back -- and it clearly caused him pain -- he was in no mood to surrender. "Double Strike!" he yelled, moving almost too fast too see as he clapped his swords together. He twirled his weapon with a flourish and lunged at Doctorimon.

Once more, the sword was stopped in its tracks, but this time, it was by Doctorimon's staff. He crossed it with Yasyamon's sword, holding him at bay. "Had you not tried to harm my friend," Doctorimon said, calm and quiet, "then this may have turned out differently. Face of Judgment!"   
The way he had oriented his staff was no mistake; the more hostile-looking mask was facing Yasyamon. The gem began to glow, and red light began to spill out of the eyes of the masks. Under its own power, the beak on the angered mask began to open-- and it began to spill a stream of black flames, licking over Yasyamon's skin.

Yasyamon roared in pain, stumbling backwards. The flames licked over his body but as they did he--   
Became pixellated?

Natalie half wondered if she needed to wear her glasses more often, because it looked as though a real-life object was becoming lower-resolution. Within mere moments, Yasyamon's body burst into pixel-like motes of light. The specks of light, or whatever they were, swirled around each other in what was too graceful to be a random array, but it was impossible to discern the pattern. The digivice in Natalie's hands beeped quietly (much quieter, less ear-grating, thank god), and as though it was a signal, almost all of the light organized itself into a thin beam and shot into the device.

It beeped softly, and the screen turned off.

And then... everything was quiet except for the cars in the distant downtown.

Like nothing had happened.

... except for the fact that Raumon was now a tall bird man. That was new.

Doctorimon turned to look at Natalie; he bowed his head and then bowed properly, with a little gesture with his staff.   
"Raumon, you, uh," the girl said, finding her voice slowly; her tongue felt like lead. "You look different." Pause. "Good, though. You look good." Though she couldn't see his mouth, she could tell, somehow, that he was smiling again. There was another few moments of silence, before--   
"Is this going to be permanent? Because we may have to stop going to the park except for like, when there are anime conventions in town. Or Halloween."

"I don't think so," Doctorimon said, shaking his head once.   
He was right, and this was right on cue. The purple light returned; he seemed a bit surprised as it began to swirl around his hands, but he remained calm as it overtook him once again. This time, instead of making him grow and turn into something new, the light began to shrink him this time. When it faded, he was once more small, feathered, and familiar-- he was Raumon once again.

Natalie breathed out a heavy, shaky breath, but she couldn't help but smile. She knew that Raumon was Raumon, end of the day, but--   
But.   
... but a crazy blue dragon man had just swung a sword at her face several times in the space of, like, ten minutes, and Raumon had turned into a big plague doctor man, and she was kind of in shock, so it was nice to have something familiar come back, okay?

 

***

"Did you see that!?"

"Hm."

"I'm going to take that as a yes, mister chatterbox."

"How many names are you going to call me tonight?"

"Like, six more."

"..."

"Anyway, I bet there's another person!"

"Do you, now."

"And I bet they got one, too."

"Only one way to find out. Tell me if you see a fire escape."

After all... after the mysterious force that brought electronic gadgets on the wind, tonight couldn't possibly get any _weirder_.

 

***

About fifteen minutes passed as Natalie and Raumon tried to gather their nerves and try to figure out what was going on. Natalie had checked her phone-- a text from her father, _everything alright up there?_ Quality parenting, she had thought as she fired back a _yeah_ , before she had sat where she sat now, with her back to the concrete wall. Raumon sat beside her, peering over at the litte device in her hands, for indeed she was holding the little purple _thing_.

She had been experimenting with it over the past couple minutes. When pressed, the buttons caused the screen to come on, and caused subtly different mostly-empty screens to show up. It had a basic menu, that much she had figured out.   
That said, none of the symbols on the screen, aside from the single word 'MENU', seemed to resemble real letters. She determined, at least, that the little circle keys were used to navigate through the menus, and the different yellow buttons brought up what were probably different functions, but what those functions _were_ was unclear. She wasn't exactly eager to press buttons she didn't understand, least of all when it had had quite so dramatic an effect on Raumon.   
The little silver charm on one end was -- curiously enough -- a little plague doctor mask, with engraved eyes but no other features. Next to the little chain holding the charm on was a pull-away tab that, frankly, looked like it would fit a mini-USB.   
Also filed under _deal with later_.

"So, that thing was--" she said slowly, still turning the thing over in her hand.

"A digimon," Raumon said, with a nod. "Like me. I mean, kind of. Obviously not entirely, but-- you know?"

"Right." _Digimon._ Raumon had said the word before, of course; he had explained that there were lots of them, that they came in many sizes and shapes, but he had also said that as best he knew, he was the only one here. Around. That Natalie would ever run into.

She had asked lots of questions over the years; she knew her fair share, but Raumon's memory of such things was always a bit spotty. She had no reason to believe that he was withholding information deliberately.   
In truth, he realy wasn't, for what it was worth-- but it still meant that their understanding was woefully incomplete.

And more pertinently, it didn't explain a damn thing about why Yasyamon was here, what he wanted, why he seemed to recognize Raumon... What this thing was that she held now. Why Raumon had grown.

"I don't understand it," Natalie said. She was loathe to admit it, of course, but there was no way around it. She was clueless.

"We're in the same boat, then," Raumon said with a shake of his head and a shrug.

Natalie looked at the gadget in her hand. She turned it over in her palm. It surprised her, really, that it had stopped Yasyamon's sword-- and that stopping a sword hadn't even scuffed it. She frowned and tucked it into her pocket, and though it was lightweight, she knew it'd weigh heavy on her mind.

And that's when Natalie just about had a heart attack for the umpteenth time tonight!

For what it's worth? She was really, really sick of surprises. Had never been fond of them! _Really starting to hate them, now._

"Hey."   
It was the voice of a young man, bored sounding, and quite close. Natalie leapt to her feet and whipped around; Raumon ducked instinctively, even though the concrete wall would have been tall enough to hide him even if he hadn't.

"Uh?" Natalie said, doing an excellent job of pretending to be composed (that's sarcasm). She had no idea where she was supposed to be looking, as she wasn't sure where the voice was coming from; she looked around, and it took a second or two for her eyes to fall on the fire escape of the next building over.

He was kind of hard to miss once she spotted him.

Standing there, leaning against the railing, was -- indeed -- a young man; he looked like he was around Natalie's age. He wore blue camo pants and tall combat-style boots. He had something of a loose mohawk, with the sides of his head shaved (though not recently-- he was kind of shaggy) and the rest of his dark hair spiked loosely. He wore a black t-shirt and black cuffs on his wrists, and he looked like the kind of person Natalie would expect to see wrecking utter face in a mosh pit or something.

"Am I late?" the young man said, looking up at Natalie. His voice and face were both hard to read, almost devoid of emotion as they were.

"No, most people hang out on fire escapes at eleven PM," she said, keeping her cool even though on the inside she began to panic. How much had this guy seen? She swore she could see him raise an eyebrow even in the dark, or maybe she just _felt_ that kind of aura coming off him, but he didn't break eye contact as he reached into his pocket.

"Let's cut to the chase. You got one of these?" he asked, pulling out of his pocket--   
A device practically identical to the one in Natalie's pocket, though it looked like it may have been blue instead of purple. She couldn't quite tell, though, as the only light came from the moon and the streetlights down at ground level.

"Maybe," she said after a moment, watching the boy carefully.

There was a tense moment of silence, wherein he scrutinized her, then shrugged his shoulders. "'Ight. C'mon up," he said, peering down into the alleyway; he raised his voice just a bit. From below, Natalie heard the distinct sound of a garbage can being knocked over.

And then there was a bat the size of a labrador flapping its way up to the fire escape.

She was the size of Raumon-- though, actually, maybe she was a bit bigger. Her entire body was steel blue in various shades, except for her white muzzle and matching fluff on her chest. She had crescent-shaped markings on her legs and shoulders-- which were separate from her wings. Indeed, she had a large pair of wings, and then in front of them, a pair of normal-ish arms.   
She had big spade-shaped ears, and big orange claws on her hands and feet; her eyes were gold and so bright they shone in the darkness.

She flapped up at high speed, though not particularly gracefully; she landed deftly on the rail of the fire escape that the boy, who was presumably her friend, was standing against.

"Howdy howdy howdy," she chirrupped, cheerful, high-pitched, with an upwards inflection that made her sound eerily like a squeaky-toy for a split second.

If this wasn't a digimon, Natalie would eat her bandana.   
She cast a sideways glance at Raumon; his brow was furrowed, but he continued to lay low.

"Name's Xander. This is Desmon." He gestured at the bat; who waved cheerfully with one club-like hand as well as the matching wing.

Natalie hesitated before returning the courtesy. "I'm Natalie," she said, looking sidelong at Raumon. "And this is--"

Raumon peeked up over the wall, his white face obvious in the dark. "Raumon," he said, looking at Desmon more than Xander.

 

***

Around the city, these two were not the only people who received the digivices. Not by a long shot.   
One by one, and one at a time, the little mysterious objects began to appear with swirls of light and zero explanation.


	2. Episode 02: The New Transmission

"'Ight. We're cutting short today," Xander said, rolling his head to loosen up his shoulders as he returned his mic to the stand. "I got a thing to do today."

The time: Saturday, around 3 PM. The place: a busted, broken garage. The reason? A busted, broken garage band.

Around him, the other members of the band mumbled their 'sure, alright's. This was around the time their band practices usually devolved away from productivity and careened headlong into unabashed screwing around, so it wasn't like they were really missing that much. Yes, they had a gig coming up in a few days, but they'd handle that like they always handled gigs.   
That is to say: by panicking.

... you have your methods, they had theirs.   
(There was a reason that they had been together for a couple years and hadn't really gotten out of Atlas Park, okay?)

The band had their fair number of quirks and oddities, not least of all how well they all managed to cope with Xander's perpetual plus-one. Desmon was kind of like their mascot-- a mascot they couldn't show to anyone else, of course, but a mascot nonetheless. They had grown pretty used to the sight of her, having had a couple of years to get used to her and a few death threats courtesy of Xander if they ever said a word about her.

They were also used to the sight of her helping herself to the snacks. Indeed, she currently currently sat on the couch pushed up against the wall, cheerfully munching away on a bag of cheeseballs. She complained whenever she was left alone, because she already had to wait at home alone while Xander worked, so she pretty much always tagged along when Ekko Lokation got together.

"Hey, Desmon, are there going to be any of those left when you're done?" Paul asked, picking out a few last sour notes on his guitar before he began the process of unplugging his amp.

"Juuuuust a minute," Desmon chirped, stuffing one last mouthful into her face before rolling up the top of the bag and tossing it over.

"Much obliged," the blonde guitarist said, turning his attention back to Xander as he opened the bag back up. "So, what is it you're doing, Xander?"

Xander looked back at him and raised one eyebrow. "Funny you should ask. I gotta go save the president of Nicaragua. Top secret shit, you know how it goes," he said dryly, holding his arm out horozontally like a falconer. Desmon knew her cue; she hopped off the couch and flapped over. She perched on her friend's upper arm and shoulder, resting her elbow on his hair after making sure she had maneuvered her wing behind his head.

"Which means: he has a date," Eric said from behind the drumset. He hadn't moved; this was, after all, his garage. He could lay all over his drums if he damn well pleased. "A real hot date with some chick he doesn't want us creepin' up on."

"Yeah, you got me. A hot date at 3 PM on a Saturday, and I haven't said a word about it before now." Xander's sarcasm was thick enough to cut with a knife as his eyelids slid down into an unimpressed expression. "Bite me."   
The truth was, of course, that he had agreed to meet up with Natalie today-- or, rather, he had said, "meet me at the Lotus Café tomorrow," and he was expecting her to show up. Standing on a rooftop and a fire escape at 11 PM did not make for the greatest discussion venues. Moreover, he was under the impression that if he prolonged, he might piss off the people whose fire escape he had been bogarting, and while he wasn't over-burdened with concern, he didn't want to explain himself or Desmon.   
And that? All of that? Not something he wanted to explain to his bandmates. Yes, they were familiar with Desmon, but this was pretty hardcore need-to-know information.

"It's none of my business," Will said, in the middle of packing his bass. "But try not to get killed until after Friday, okay? We kinda need you for that and it'd be a pain to get a new vocalist on that short'a notice."

"We'd have to like, print up fliers, and make online listings," Paul said with a mock horrified expression. "Or we could just pull some rando out of the crowd, he'd probably sound nicer than you."

Eric couldn't help but leap in. "We're not supposed to sound nice, we're supposed to sound like something you'd want to form a psycho pit to. That's basically the mood Xander is in all the time. It'd be a serious pain in the dick."

"It's nice to have such great friends," Xander deadpanned, throwing middle fingers over his shoulder as he strode out of the garage. "Fuck all you guys."

 

***

Xander and Desmon had been following Yasyamon the night before-- it was this pursuit that had led them, instead, to Natalie and Raumon. Xander had been visiting Will a good few streets away; an attempt to hammer out a song had turned into them standing on the balcony, yelling unkind words (read: death threats) up at Will's frat-boy upstairs neighbors and being thoroughly unheard over the thumping of their house party music.   
Look, this sounds extreme, but it wasn't just house party music, it was _bro country_ party music.

It had made them feel better in the moment, at least, even if the only real effect it had was mildly annoying some douchebgas.

It had been Desmon, staying just inside, who had seen it first-- a blurry black shape leaping from rooftop to rooftop; she had immediately wanted to follow it, having gotten 'a strange sort of feeling' from it. Xander might not have been so ready to agree if not for the fact that he wanted nothing more than to avoid the headache he had forming. It had been moving too erratically to follow by car-- and seeing as Xander didn't fancy concocting some truly fascinating excuses up to tell the cops when he careened through an alleyway, they had taken off on foot. Or, by foot and by wing, anyway.

On their way there, they didn't think twice about the rush of wind that blew through the alleyway they were ducking through-- but they had noticed the streak of light and the little blue-and-black gizmo that currently rested in Xander's pocket.   
Though he had no way to prove it, Xander had the distinct feeling that he and Natalie weren't alone in this. He was right, of course, but right now, he only had one lead, and he was going to take it.

But back to the present: they were on their way to the Lotus, and Desmon was doing as Desmon do.

"It's unreal, don't you think?" Desmon chattered as they took a right at a traffic light. "Finding another digimon!"

"I'm going to guess you're not referring to the one we were chasing after," Xander said, glancing sidelong at the bat. She was sitting shotgun, with her wings folded around her like a poncho.   
He knew his guess was right; that one had been a rogue. It was far more interesting that there was another person with the little... thing.

"Well, yeah," Desmon confirmed, nodding and twitching her ears. "The bird, I mean! Was it just me, or did you feel like he was kind of familiar somehow?"

"It's just you. I don't know about you and what you've done in your life, but I don't hang around with giant chickens."

 

***

"You're going to wait here," Xander said as they pulled into the parking lot -- which was really more of a parking strip -- behind the Café.

"Awww, whaaaat? Why?" Desmon exclaimed, indignant and furrowing her brow.

"Well, we're in a public place," Xander replied, putting the car in park. (His parking job was kind of bad, but it was inside the lines, so it still counted.) "In case you forgot."

"I don't see why we couldn't meet her somewhere where there weren't other people," the bat said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "Like your apartment! Your apartment isn't that bad. I mean, it's small and you haven't cleaned up your socks in, like, ever, but--"

Xander cut her off. "First of all, because I don't want her to think I'm going to chloroform her and have her wake up in a basement I don't have, which is a thing that women think when you demand they come to your house a day after meeting them."

Beat.   
"I see your point."

"... and secondly, and more importantly," Xander continued, "it's a long drive back to the north side, and I'm lazy." Desmon snickered, and Xander smirked. He began getting out of the driver's seat. "I'll leave my phone and keys. Try not to get anyone's attention." His windows were tinted, which helped keep Desmon low-key, but, you know, never hurt to reinforce.

"Roger-doger!" Desmon replied, giving a thumbs-up as she picked up her friend's phone to start picking out a playlist. Xander nodded, locked the doors, and looped around the front of the building to go in the front door. As he passed the window, he chanced a glance inside; it was almost entirely empty. On one hand, it meant few people to overhear; on the other, it meant very little cover.   
It was going to be one or the other, though, so he wasn't about to complain.

Regardless. It did make it easy to see that in in the back corner, there was an occupied table; a red-headed girl, tapping at her phone and looking guarded, with a ceramic mug set to cool beside her.   
Cool.

The tinkling of the bell attached to the door caught her attention as Xander walked in. She looked up and nodded in greeting, but didn't say anything as he crossed over to the table. Xander, for his part, raised a hand in greeting to the barista behind the counter.   
"Hey," he said simply, inviting himself into the chair opposite Natalie.

"Hi," Natalie said, sitting forward a bit more. Looking at him up close, she could see things she couldn't have possibly seen last night-- namely, how many pieces of metal were in his face. He had at least five pieces of silver jewelry in various piercings, and-- okay, those were _definitely_ contacts, because his eyes were a super unnatural, rich golden yellow.   
It kind of made her uncomfortable, honestly.

"So you've got a Digimon, too," Xander said, ever one to skip right to the chase. He spoke quietly, so as not to give their conversation away, but a quick glance revealed that the one barista manning the front was slacking off and reading a magazine behind the counter.

"Yep," Natalie said, folding her arms and sitting back in her chair.

"You seen any others before last night?" Xander asked, frowning slightly.

"Not as far as I'm aware of, no."

Xander sighed through his nose and ran a hand backwards through his hair. "Then you're just as in the dark as I am. Great. Fantastic."

"This is just as new to me as it is to you, you know," Natalie said, quirking an eyebrow. "I mean, I just spent fifteen years thinking my best friend was the only thing like him in the city-- heck, the world, for all I knew!"   
She paused, and sighed, and took a sip of her drink. She knew she was getting too animated. "And then in one night, I get one monster making threats on my life, I got a piece of plastic electronic crap granted to me by means of magic light, my friend shapeshifts into a _different_ monster for all of five minutes, and then a third monster shows up that _my_ monster thinks he knows. And then _her_ friend grills _me_ in a coffee shop like we're characters giving exposition in a screenplay by some kind of hack writer."

... ANYWAY.

Natalie paused again, and Xander's eyebrows shot up.

"I've had a weird day is what I'm trying to say," Natalie concluded.

"Gives me something to work with, though," Xander admitted, and he smirked a bit.   
For one: fifteen years, which meant they were working on the same timeline. The second-- the magic sky-light electronics delivery service. That meant that at least on two counts, they had something in common-- but it also gave him insight into what the digivice did. He had poked at it, but when realizing he couldn't make heads or tails of it, had quickly said fuck it (both metaphorically and literally, outloud, said "fuck it") and put it back down.

Whatever. Progress was progress.

"So, fill me in. What happened last night?" Xander asked, kicking his chair back and balancing it on its back two legs, ignoring the disengaged, bored barista's mumble of _four on the floor, if you don't mind_.

Natalie paused for a moment and thought back. She talked about hearing the noise on top of her apartment, and of finding Yasyamon on the roof; she talked about the fight, even if she kind of glossed over the exact blow-for-blows. She explained the little device and how when it got hit and started glowing, Raumon transformed into Doctorimon. She talked about everything right up until Xander and Desmon had shown up; she felt that was a pretty good place to stop. She spoke quietly and cast occasional glances around to see if anyone was eavesdropping or giving them weird looks. Considering that the only other people in the shop were a middle-aged woman with earbuds in and the disinterested barista, she wasn't too worried.

"That's it, then?" Xander asked her.

Natalie nodded. She hadn't mentioned either her or Raumon's gut feelings from earlier in the day, or if they had anything to do with anything-- it was a mix of not totally trusting this new guy, and not being sure if she could trust this new guy.

Such as it was, Xander wasn't totally sure he could trust this new girl, either. It worked out.

"Give me your phone number," he said without preamble or lead-in. When Natalie raised her eyebrow, as he had done a number of times, he shrugged one shoulder. "If we find anything out, it'd be useful. Easier than me climbing up a fire escape again if some other digimon shows up like Yasyamon did."   
He had the distinct feeling that they would.

(Yeah, that was his razor-sharp lightning brain at work; please, hold your applause.)

"Suppose I can't argue with that," Natalie said after a moment, shrugging as well with a nod. She rattled off her phone number; Xander thumbed it into his contact list and rattled his off in return.   
"There's some kind of connection, yeah?" she said. "Between the gadget things and Yasyamon showing up."

"Mmm." Xander hummed, leaning back and closing his eyes; he didn't see Natalie's eyebrow twitch a little bit in annoyance.

"It made Raumon stronger. It's too unlikely that it's a coincidence that it shows up right when the first other Digimon I've ever seen--"

"So we wouldn't need them if there weren't going to be more freaks of the week," Xander said, cutting her off.   
She was getting sick of this guy's attitude in record time.

"That was the point I was getting at, yes," she said coolly.

Xander nodded and let his chair clatter to the floor. He rubbed his chin in thought; there was a lot more he could say, but right now, what was certain? A rogue digimon, it had been looking for Raumon. The gadgets appeared; they were related to the digimon. More weirdos might appear, or they might not.   
Plans are hard to make when the future those plans rely on a are a big, resounding question mark-- and Xander wasn't about to spend a lot of energy preparing for a total unknown.   
"Good job, team," Xander said in a very sarcastic tone of voice. "Very enlightening." Behind them, the bell on the door rang gently, as a gaggle of teenagers -- five or six, at least-- was entering the shop.   
That was their cue to leave.

"Nice meeting you on a place that wasn't a fire escape," Natalie said, finishing off her drink and standing up. Xander smirked as he also got to his feet. "I'm sure we're going to meet up again soon enough."

"Probably," Xander confirmed.   
They didn't part ways just yet; they had both parked out back, and so both had to loop around to the back.

As they approached, Desmon rolled down the window of Xander's car. "Hi!" she chirped over the sudden blast of funk-rock that she was bumping over the car stereo. Natalie smiled, enjoying Desmon's vibe and personality somewhat more than the boy she hung around with. "If Xandie's been rude, don't mind it. He's just like that!" the bat continued, ears twitching as she beamed.

"I'll keep that in mind," Natalie said while Xander, behind her, groaned and rolled his eyes. Natalie waved goodbye as she continued down the row of cars; Xander did a half-salute as he climbed into his driver's seat.

"How'd it go?" Desmon asked, looking over at him as he started up the car.

Xander breathed oiut heavily through his nose. He didn't respond immediately, his attention on pulling out of his parking space.   
"I just don't want to get stuck playing crisis reaction squad," he said, and left it at that as he turned his attention to mentally mapping his way back home.

 

***

Neither Natalie nor Xander had noticed the subtle, curious expression that the bored barista had cast at them as they left the café, nor the small, secret, almost hopeful smile that pulled one corner of his mouth up.

 

***

"... all I'm saying is, you should have got got me a muffin while you were there. Those muffins are the best."   
Desmon, as was normal for her, went on at great length the entire drive back. She didn't have any particular subject; she just saw fit to share every single thought that occurred to her.

Xander had learned a long time ago that there were times that Desmon had useful things to say, and there were times that he could safely tune out without missing anything. This was one of the latter times.   
Desmon, for her part, had learned when Xander was tuning her out, and amped up the ridiculousness of what she said just to watch how little Xander reacted.

It was a symbiotic relationship.

"... so, anyway," she was saying as they pulled into the parking lot of Xander's apartment complex, "I stole all your boxers and shot them at passing children, so don't be surprised if the elastic is a bit worn out."

"I'm sure I'd have asked," Xander said, casting a sidelong glance at Desmon. She grinned. Xander gathered up his belongings, and crossed to the other side of the car to let Desmon out. She looked around to make sure nobody was watching-- then, she stopped to listen. After all, if those ears couldn't hear jack, there wasn't jack to be heard.   
Confident that the coast was clear, she hopped out of the car and spread her wings before she even hit the ground. A bit of frantic flapping later, and she had deftly landed on the metal railing outside their place on the second floor. She was used to this song and dance; it helped that she could hear a pin drop across a room if she wanted to, so if she needed to hide, she'd be the first to know and have ample time to get out of sight.

Point is: perched on the railing, she waved. Xander rolled his eyes, before taking off after. He took the stairs two at a time, and was quick to get the door unlocked.

Xander's place was, in a word: tiny.   
In two words: tiny, and messy.   
It consisted of two rooms-- the main room and the bathroom. The kitchen was relegated to one end of the room; the futon in the middle doubled as Xander's bed.   
In the opposite corner from the kitchen, above the window, Xander had rigged up a mesh net, with no small number of tacks and nails ("I ain't getting the deposit back on this fuckin' dump, anyway," he had reasoned through a mouthful of nails and over the pounding of his hammer). Up in that net was a couple of small blankets and a handful of pillows.

Take a guess who that was for, and take a guess who hopped her way over and flapped up into it the moment the door was opened.

"What now?" Desmon asked, kicking back in her little nest as Xander faceplanted onto the futon.

"Nothing," Xander said, voice muffled by the throw pillow his face was currently buried in. He wasn't in the mood to do much of anything; tomorrow he had work, and he had enough to think about as it was. After a moment, though, he stood up--   
But only long enough to get a soda from the fridge and turn the TV on, after which he promptly face-planted once more.

"You're sure about the freaky crow thing?"

Desmon looked over at Xander; she almost didn't hear him, between the fact that the TV was cranked up high and the fact that he was speaking into a pillow. Still, though... dem ears.   
"Totally sure."

Xander paused, sitting up a bit more properly. Perhaps he was about to make some kind of thoughtful commentary or insight, or-- "Chinese sound alright for tonight?"

"I want lo mein!"

 

***

"How'd it go?" Raumon asked, looking up from his book, as Natalie walked into their room. She didn't respond with words, merely breathed out through her teeth and flopped onto her back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling while spread eagle.   
"That well, I take it?"

"Like talking to a brick wall," Natalie said, turning to look at Raumon. "You're sure about the bat, though?"

"Not sure what, exactly," Raumon said with a nod, "but I'm sure. I've seen her before."

 

***

So, let's move ahead a little bit; it was the Thursday after Xander had met up with Natalie, and since then, very little had happened. No more digimon had shown up as far as Xander or Natalie knew about. Neither had made any attempt to contact each other in the interrim, and both were just fine with that.   
Xander had spent his night as he had been expecting to-- rehearsing to the poing of exhaustion, because they were out of wiggle room. Tomorrow night was the gig; it was just basically opening for an opener for the band people actually cared about, but it was at the Rock Star (excuse me-- the Rock★Star), which was as good as they could hope for right now. Sure, Xander had work until just two hours before the show!   
But he had _priorities_ dammit.

It was the last moments of Thursday when they wrapped up; by the time they were clearing out of the garage, it was past midnight. Paul and Will had already said their goodbyes and cleared out, while Eric was waiting patienty -- albeit not _too_ patiently, for Xander and Desmon to scram.

"I'll see you later," Xander said, waving vaguely at Eric, then looked over to where Desmon was still sitting on the ratty couch. "Get your ass in gear," he was in the middle of saying when his phone went off. It was just a text, because who actually _called?_ , but he frowned regardless. He pulled his phone out of his pocket with a grumble of _who the hell_ and _better be important_.

_From: Natalie || 00:04  
Something big and flying heading towards downtown- lights flickered and device thing lit up as it went by. raumon thinks it's a digimon_

Well, that was one way to break the ice, wasn't it? He hissed through his teeth and ran a hand backwards through his hair as he swiped letters on his screen.   
_i'm busy. get back to me if you're sure._

Desmon gave him a quizzical look, tilting her head.   
"We going?" she asked, her ears and nose twitching in curiosity.

"I've been waiting for you, pudding-brain," Xander said back, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm leaving you guys in the dark," Eric said cheerfully, walking towards the door that would lead back into his house. "Try not to steal anything. Lock the side door on your way out."

"Who was the text from?" Desmon asked, completely ignoring Eric's warning, and similarly unperturbed when the lights were killed, leaving them in the dark.   
Xander, with slightly worse senses than the giant bat, had to take a moment to let his eyes readjust. They weren't totally left in the dark, as shafts of light from streetlights outside still bled through the dusty windows. He heaved a heavy sigh and contemplated whether or not he should just not tell Desmon.

She'd probably try to get into his phone later, what with her total lack of sense of privacy and incredible knack for sticking her nose where it didn't belong.

"Bird girl," he said, shrugging a shoulder as he crossed over to the side door that would lead out onto the driveway.

Even in the dark, Xander could tell that Desmon perked up with curiosity. "What'd she say?"

"Nothing importa--"

Buzz.

Fuck.

Desmon flapped up onto Xander's shoulders as he pulled his phone back out; to understand the way this felt when he wasn't braced for it, have someone drop a full sack of potatoes on your shoulders from the top of a ladder.

" _Christ!_ Lay off the cheeseballs, you fat fuck!"

Desmon grinned so hard it was darn near audible.   
(Inside the house, Eric contemplated checking back in. He contemplated for about three seconds, and then he got a soda out of the fridge.)

Xander snorted derisively as he turned his attention back to his phone.   
_From: Natalie || 00:06  
Don't shoot the messenger, just figured you might be closer than I am_

He was, of course, assuming she was at home, but that still didn't mean he wanted to run around on whims and hunches at midnight.

Xander stuffed his phone back into his pocket, but Desmon hummed faux-thoughtfully, in a way meant primarily to get his attention.

"What?" he said, but Desmon just hummed again.   
Beat. Beat. Beat.   
" _Fine._ "

Desmon chittered cheerfully as Xander yet again retrieved his phone from his pocket. As he did, he finally crossed to the door leading outside, swinging it open. Desmon alighted ever-so-gently (ha) from his shoulders, flapping over to land beside his car. She turned and looked expectantly at him; his walk over was slowed by the fact that he was having to be that one weirdo who actually _calls_.

Natalie answered on the third ring.

"What's up?" her voice came from the other line.

"Explain to me what's going on, exactly, that's so important that you had to text me?"   
He realized he was complaining about this while in the middle of calling her, but it was too late to take it back now. He unlocked the car so Desmon could climb in, but he himself remained standing.

"Look towards downtown?" She sounded like she was quickly descending a flight of stairs-- maybe she had started heading out once she got it in her head that Xander wasn't going to do anything. Admittedly, he wasn't going to, but--

"I ain't seeing jack," Xander said, before he even bothered turning to look in the direction in question, but come on. What was he supposed to be looking for? It was dark, and this was stupid--

A huge black shape soared by overhead towards the downtown district. The porch lights on a few of the houses nearby flickered for just a split second.   
Well, shit.   
It was dark, admittedly, but even against the black sky it was obvious that it was a giant bird of some denomination, but it seemed to flicker and shift. Desmon scrambled from out of the car and onto the roof to watch it pass. It barely beat its wings, instead soaring silently towards the lights of Atlas Park.

There was no reason for him to be seeing a singular bird flying in the night, unless the bird in question was the size of a Buick. (Spoiler alert: it was.)

"Okay, so strike that. Looks like a bird the size of a boeing flew by. I'm going to take a guess," Xander said slowly, "that that's what you were talking about?"

"It's a digimon!" Desmon exclaimed, one hundred percent sure of herself.

"Ding ding ding," Natalie said; it was hard to tell whether she was replying to Xander or Desmon's remark.

"Shit." Beat. "Fukkit, I'll tail it." He could see Desmon's ears perk up yet again.

"You want me and Raumon to go after it? You seemed so very loathe to go a second ago." Natalie asked.

"I ain't gonna stop you if you want to come spectate," Xander replied, but he felt a vague sense of indignance. Desmon leapt off of his car and flapped over, preparing to land on his shoulders again, but he stuck out an arm and clotheslined her; she recovered quickly and perched on his arm instead. "But I'll take care of this, jus' watch."

He could imagine Natalie's lip pulling back in a skeptical sort of expression, but instead of a complaint:   
"If you're sure."

"Yeh, I'm sure."

Xander was extremely not sure, but he was even more extremely not willing to say as much.

 

***

It was a short drive, at least. Xander had been trying to keep his eyes on the birdthing, but both the sky and the bird being dark made it difficult to do that while also not crashing his car. The only blessing was that it didn't seem to be moving terribly fast, meaning that it hadn't been as though Xander had to floor it to keep up.   
(The fact that it was after midnight and this meant the number of people on the road was low was also a blessing, actually.)

It was a short ways into the city, however, that Xander completely lost sight of it.

"Shit!" he spat through grit teeth, pulling off into an unoccupied metered spot on the side of a one-way street. He rolled the window down so he could crane his neck out and look to the sky. If he had been looking at the digivice, he might have found its radar function and had a much easier time, but guess what he didn't think to do?

The good news, though: he had Desmon.

The little bat's ears twitched and she frowned, humming yet again in deep thought. Then, without warning, she opened up her door and leapt out of the car, taking off into the air.   
"Wh-- the hell are you doing?" Xander hissed. Even though he was asking what Desmon was doing, before he knew what _he_ was doing he had pulled the keys out of the ignition, unbuckled, and practically flung himself out of the driver's seat as well.

"Follow me!" Desmon said, popping up from the other side of the car. Luckily for them there was nobody on the sidewalk to see her as she leapt into the air, out of the spaces lit up by streetlamps. You see, she was a bat; she had magnificent ears and a hunch. Mostly the ears.

Xander took off after her; she led down an alleyway to the street on the other side, a one-way heading in the other direction. That had been what had got them-- because they could see, circling above a parking garage on the opposite side of the street, a big circling black shape, and the lights on the parking structure going a bit on the fritz.

" _Nice_ ," Xander said, looking up at Desmon. She would have preened a bit, but there was no time; she took off flying, leaving Xander to follow on foot. He did; he bolted across the street, crosswalks be damned. The bar was down to prevent any cars from entering the structure; he leapt over it and scanned for a stairwell.

He found one; he took those stairs up, three stories, two at a time.

Thank god he was in shape or he would have been miserable right now. Ignore the fact that he had to stop to catch his breath with his hands on his knees as he reached the top; he was upright in a moment's notice, because there were far more important things at hand right now.

Desmon was perched on the concrete barrier by the hut where the stairs let out, waiting-- but her eyes were cast skyward. It was getting closer-- big, black, and totally oblivious to the pair watching it.

(Xander wondered, momentarily, how many other people were seeing this.)

"That a digimon?" he said, frowning.

"No doubt about it," Desmon confirmed.

"I'm not surprised," Xander said slowly, the corner of his mouth twitching downwards, "but I am disappointed." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the digivice that was still safely stowed there. It was on, and there were words on the screen-- _Menu_. Strange symbols on the side of the screen indicated one of the buttons, and ever the scientist, he pushed it.

As he pressed the button, up sprang a radar that looked like a street map in blue lines on a black background, with two shining dots almost overlapped. If he looked close, one of them was a simple white dot-- the other looked like a silhouette of Desmon's head. That would have been nice to know before.

In frustration, he pressed his thumb down on the little white dot, and three words popped up in a little window:   
_Saberdramon. Champion level._

"The fuck does that mean, you plastic piece of shit?" he hissed in frustration. Above him, he heard the sound of flapping wings, and his eyes were drawn upwards.   
It was not the black bird approaching making that flappa flappa flappa noise-- it was Desmon, flying towards the giant black bird that was approximately an order of magnitude bigger than her.

"Come on, you giant turkey! Black Static!" Desmon yelled, opening her mouth wide. She shot a short series of -- indeed -- black and staticky concentric rings of energy from her mouth that flew skywards at her target.

The rings hit the giant bird -- Saberdramon? -- harmlessly in the breast, but it got its attention. Was this a good thing? ... good question! It turned its attention downwards, and stopped its movement to flap in place.

"Get down here, you idiot!" Xander yelled as his eyes shifted from Desmon over to Saberdramon.

Its body was covered in inky black-blue feathers, but its wings and its tail seemed to crackle with fire. It was difficult to tell where the flames started and the feathers ended. Silver talons glinted in the moonlight. Its beak was blunt and rounded, but to make up for it, it had two rows of sharp teeth poking out what might have been lips, if the phrase 'bird lips' weren't so deeply uncomfortable.

It glared, metallic gold eyes glinting with a feral ferociousness. It offered no rebuttal to Desmon, but it spread its wings wide.   
"Night Roar!" it cawed, releasing a flurry of razor-sharp feathers from its wings. They burned like purple embers and shot across the dark sky like shooting stars-- and began to rain down on Desmon.   
Judging by how effective Desmon's attack had been, Xander assumed that Saberdramon would have an advantage, but it was no nicer to see Desmon nearly knocked out of the sky. She grit her teeth, though, and flapped frantically to stay aloft.

Most of the feathers faded by the time they got that far, but a few stray ones collided with the roof of the parking structure, and they left ashen marks like they were actually made of fire.

"That all you got?" Desmon said with a cocky grin that Xander could hear in her voice, even if he couldn't see it above him. "Come on, birdy boy!"

"Black Saber!" Saberdramon roared, swooping down lightning-quick, its claws pulsing with the same purple energy that the rain of feathers had glowed with. Desmon yelped and dodged quickly to the side, only narrowly missing the grip of the bird's talons.

Xander was suddenly aware that even if the streets were scarcely populated, that wasn't _nothing_ \-- he could hear from street level a couple people exclaiming with confusion and alarm, and he heard a car slam on the brakes.

Crap. This one seemed more feral than the one Natalie had fought, that he and Desmon had pursued. He looked at his digivice; how did he make this thing _work_? Desmon didn't stand a chance as she was--

"Night Roar!"

This one actually did knock Desmon out of the air. Xander's train of thought got handily derailed as he leapt into action. Luckily, Desmon hadn't gone far-- he was able to position himself underneath her and catch her before she hit the roof.

"God, you're heavy," Xander muttered, with he smiled faintly as Desmon chuckled. Her eyes were squeezed shut; she looked like she had seen better days. Xander looked up at Saberdramon, who was starting to lower itself down to land.

The bird was here. It had an attitude. It didn't seem to have an agenda, or if it did, it sucked at it. It was causing property damage. It had hurt Desmon.   
Xander's patience, already in short supply, was overdrawn.

"You ready to trash this thing?" Desmon said, cracking one eye to peer up at him.

"I'm kinda pissed."

"Good. So am I."

While they chit-chatted away, Saberdramon began to gather energy again, spreading its wings as it prepared to finish off the annoying little bat and her even-more-annoying little friend.

In his hand, the little digivice Xander held began to glow.

It swirled with blue energy, and-- you know, no amount of description of how horrible that noise was prepared Xander for the horrible screeching computerized noise that emitted from the gadget. He couldn't be happier when it died back down and the digivice flashing far-too-fast information across the screen, as the light began to swirl around it faster. Soon, Desmon followed suit.

Xander let go of her, and she was suspended in the air for a moment instead of dropping like a stone, as though the light was making her weightless.

 

"Desmon, drive evolve to..."

Desmon began to grow so rapidly that Xander had to take a step backwards. She kept the same physical form, with powerful hind legs and large spread wings, but her arms vanished as her wings grew more developed. Her ears grew longer and swept back, while a fluffy mane sprouted from the crown of her head and coming down around her neck. This new fluff framed a trio of silver rings that encircled her throat, while bandages wrapped around her feet framed her claws.

She grew a long, draconic tail; it was as long as her body, and the tip erupted into a stinger like a scorpion's. She looked somewhat like a wyvern crossed with a bat. She flapped her wings and snapped her tail like a whip as she settled her feet on the roof; she was almost nine feet tall, and her wingspan far greater than that.

"Corymon!"

 

"Hell yes!" Xander exclaimed, pumping his fist with a wolfish grin on his face.

"Finally," Saberdramon's voice rumbled as its talons crunched down on the roof. "A digimon that is not so weak."

"What do you know, it can talk," Corymon chuckled, glancing sidelong at Xander. "Where do you think you are, bub?" she said, then, looking over at the bird. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're messing up my plans for the night."

The black bird snorted, and took off into the air with a powerful kick-off. "Night Roar!"

Corymon narrowed her eyes and grinned. So be it! She kicked off as well, with much more grace than she usually did, and much gentler than the bird, at that. "Black Stinger!" she cried. Her tail curled below her and began to glow with a black aura, much like the static rings she had shot as Desmon. Almost immediately, the black energy was released in the form of arrowhead-like blasts.

They smashed into Saberdramon, five in all; quite unlike her previous form's Black Static, Saberdramon couldn't shake these off like they were nothing. It keened loudly and glared at Corymon.

She grinned.

"Pick it up!" Xander said, but was trying to be quiet. He would bet money that anyone down below would be getting cameras out, and he sure didn't want his voice to carry that far.

"I didn't think you did ska, I thought you were more of a punk rock classic kind of guy," Corymon remarked cheerfully, but her snark was cut short. (She ignored Xander yelling _Not funny!_.)

"Black Saber!" Saberdramon lifted higher into the air. Its talons glowed as it prepared to swoop at the bat.

"Hurricane Blitz!" Corymon cried. As if summoned by her words, the wind began to whip viciously around her; Xander could swear he could see it, streams of air tinted with blueish light swirling around her.

Corymon surged forward, like she was going to headbutt Saberdramon right in the gizzard. The sphere of wind surrounding her acted like a shield; it impacted the bird first, and exploded like a bomb. Xander was almost concerned, but just as soon as he could look, Corymon had shot backwards away from the impact, where Saberdramon was thrown backwards far less voluntarily.

The black phoenix let out an ear-shredding keen as its body began to shift and distort, pixellating and...   
God, this must have been horrifying to the onlookers.

Saberdramon's cry quieted down only as it burst into pixellated motes of light.

Corymon alighted next to Xander, surprisingly light for something of her size. "We're not gonna get to your car the normal way, people are staring," she said, looking around. "Wanna try things my way? I'm preeeetty sure I can make it before I turn back."

"I'm afraid of what 'your way' entails," Xander said in deadpan, "and 'pretty sure' from you is, what, fifty-fifty?"

"Something like that!" Corymon grinned at him and kicked off into the air-- and on the way up, she grabbed Xander, almost entirely engulfing him in her big orange claws. It was simultaneously one of the coolest things he'd ever experienced, and one of the most pants-shittingly horrifying. Corymon immediately took off back the whole, like, one block over and one block up to where Xander had parked.

Xander looked down at the street below the parking garage, and saw a small smattering of people -- not a lot, maybe four or five standing on the street total. Still, four or five more than he wanted there to be.

Corymon did a great job of not letting Xander know that she could feel her form starting to get harder to maintain, but she managed; she gently set Xander down on the sidewalk and no sooner than her claws released him did she begin to glow bright white and blue.   
A second later, she was Desmon again, and she dropped cheerfully into Xander's arms.

"If you dropped me," was the first thing Xander said, "I was going to flay you alive."

Desmon grinned as Xander dropped her on the groundd so he could open up his car doors.

As soon as the bat was safely tucked in the passenger seat of his car, Xander couldn't help but ring up Natalie.

"Took care of it."


	3. Episode 03: We Still Have the Radio

In a messy basement-level flat in the university district of Atlas Park, a young man turned on the television tuned to the news station.

"... _but luckily,_ " the familiar voice of co-anchor Rebecca Porter was reading over shaky, grainy camera cellphone footage of bright lights over a parking garage, " _damage to public property seems to be minimal. No hard evidence has been found to support any particular explanations, but the official police statement is that it was likely a prank..._ "

In front of that television, another young man stopped walking.  
He furrowed his brow and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He looked at the screen, and felt-- a mix of relief, confusion, and something else. Almost a week later, and finally, something he could work with-- maybe. If she thought it might be something, at any rate.  
Insert-deity-of-choice bless the people who cared more about filming weird occurrences than petty things like getting out of the way, or he might have kept right on walking without paying an ounce of mind to the local news.

"Peter, if you don't move, I'm going to kill you," the first young man said sharply, but honestly, he was used to this.

"Hm?" Peter was knocked out of his reverie by his roommate's threat of violence. "Oh. Very persuasive," he said back coolly; he smiled a thin smile and sidestepped such that Ian could see the television. The channel switched almost immediately, but Peter had seen enough, and thanked his fortuitous timing.

He had just been heading back to his room with a sandwich in hand, but this gave him pause. "Don't suppose I could convince you to change back to the news?" he ventured. Ian looked back at him and raised his eyebrows.

"You can look it up on that there interwebs. I have faith in your abilities," he said, reaching out. If he could be bothered to stand up, he would have patted Peter on the shoulder; as it was, he patted him in more of the elbow region.

"Thank you for your boundless helpfulness," Peter said dryly, but Ian was right, and he continued walking back to his bedroom. As he crossed the threshold, a little digimon poked her head up over the other side of Peter's bed.

Enter: Banmon.

Or, rather, enter: Peter, because, you know, he was the one actually entering the room.

"You look like you know something I don't," she said, drifting up out of her bed of choice-- a laundry basket. (Not the laundry basket Peter actually _used_ , mind you. It was specially sectioned off for her.)  
This made more sense when you realized what she looked like-- her body looked like black smoke, long and curling like a snake's. Wide strips of gauze-like tan fabric were wound around her, loose ends tucked into the folds or left to dangle. Her head was covered by a large baggy hood with big black buttons on top that made her look kind of like a ragdoll. This hood shaded her face, leaving only her glowing white eyes visible on her face.

Though she might appear to have no limbs, two lengths of loose fabric coming out from under her hood had the rough appearance of hands, and instead of hanging limp, she was able to animate them and manipulate objects.

"Honestly, I'm not sure if I do," Peter said, taking a seat in his computer chair and setting his sandwich down on the table. Banmon tilted her head and blinked (that is, the lights that served as her eyes flickered out for a moment). She waited for him to say more; maybe, if she didn't know him as well as she did, she might be annoyed by his non-answer, but he was moving with purpose and she decided to drift over to watch what he was looking up.  
Banmon had felt... uneasy, the past week or so. She couldn't quite place it, but it hadn't gone away. She couldn't say this made her feel any better, actually, but, you know.

Once his computer had come out of sleep mode, it only took a few clicks and keystrokes to get to the local news' site, and there, right on the front page, was the online version of the news story of the day. The pictures were low-resolution and blurry, and the auto-playing video was. Well. Any time it cut back to the video of the happenings, it was hectic and shaky, grainy and the audio cut in and out.

Banmon, looking over Peter's shoulder, let loose a little gasp. "Do you think--?" she said, even though she knew immediately what she was looking at.

"I was going to ask you," Peter admitted, eyes darting back and forth as he skimmed the page for any information that might prove useful. From the looks of it, most people were writing it off as a confusing publicity stunt or a prank. That worked fine for him.  
_Witnesses indicated that their phones began to malfunction, accounting for the quality..._

"Don't read the comments..." Banmon warned as her friend reached the end of the article proper. He, of course, loved himself far too much to do such a stupid act, and stopped to scroll back up. He stopped on the video that was playing, intercut with commentators and anchors. Banmon squinted at the video, while Peter's eyes drifted off to the side.

Half-buried under a flurry of loose papers there was a little electronic device. The faceplate of his was white, and the little charm dangling off the edge was a little cartoony skull, but aside from that it was identical in almost every way to the others. He had attempted to make it work, but his attempts had proved as fruitful as any other so far-- that is to say, not really.  
It might not have even been in such a conspicuous place if not for the fact that on Saturday, two customers had come into the Lotus on Peter's shift. He sort-of kind-of recognized the girl, as she had come into the Lotus multiple times during the school year as well as occasionally seeing her around on campus, but the other dude was a total unknown.

He had, indeed, been the one on shift at that point in time, and how fortuitous it had been that he was. He had tuned them out, not _intending_ to be a creeper; but after he had had to make the request that the guy keep his chair in its intended position, he noticed that they were certainly ending a lot of words in _mon_.  
Now, he wasn't going to assume anything, but he had a hunch that they _probably_ weren't speaking a bad Jamaican patois, so if he had maybe listened a little closer, then... well. Greater good, okay?

He made sure to take note of their faces before they left, just in case.

Was this kind of creepy? Probably, but around the time that strange electronic doohickeys start materializing from light and thin air, you're going to take notice of anyone who says, _hey, so, this electronic doohickey appeared_ in a public place.

Peter reached over to the little gadget and turned it over in his hand. It was his day off, but he knew the chances of his actually finding anything out were... not great. But it was the first chance he had after a week of searching high and low for anything, right? So...

"You're thinking of doing something, aren't you?" Banmon's voice cut through his thoughts.

Peter didn't answer immediately, leaning back in his computer chair. Banmon hovered nearby, watching his face. He looked intently at the digivice, then at his computer, and then turned to look at Banmon. He picked up half of his sandwich and offered it to her.  
Peter's computer screen flickered behind him while he was looking away; in the front room, the television went bizarrely staticky for a half a second.

"I'm thinking of going into town in a little bit. You want to come? S'okay if not."

 

 

***

Banmon had always had a bit of a preference for enclosed spaces-- in fact she had always kind of disliked being out in the open. Luckily enough, then, she fit into many small spaces; she was long, but the bulkiest parts of her were her hood and hands, which weren't exactly like trying to stuff something with actual bones and meaty parts into a space.  
While she was a bit too big to comfortably fit in a traditional backpack like she had as Wispmon, a duffel bag was hardly any more conspicuous.

She had never been particularly sociable, either, so it's not like she really minded having that barrier between her and other people. Even Ian, who was perfectly well aware of his curious other roommate, only rarely saw her. She kept the last part of the zipper undone, though. She liked looking out and seeing what was around her while safely not having to deal with it or worry about being seen.

So anyway, Peter sat with his duffel bag across his knees on the back of a city bus headed for the downtown district.  
(He had originally set the bag to the seat beside him, but a shrill 40-something woman had begun ranting about how young people these days were so disrespectful. Not wanting to cause a scene, he moved the bag onto his lap, not daring to ask why she couldn't just take the unoccupied seat another space away-- until she did, and then set down her own bulging handbag on the newly-freed seat.)

(Whatever. He had a car, yes, and probably could have driven, but his idea of fun was not trying to get where he was going and have to park and deal with all that shit, so he could live with the inconveniences.)

Ostensibly he was looking at his phone, but as he flicked through news articles and social media posts, his mind was entirely somewhere else.

Namely, it was in the duffel bag, on the little ghost tucked away in hiding. It was in the Lotus, where he had overheard that conversation. It was at the parking garage he was on his way to check out.  
It was in the vast empty chasm of everything he didn't know.

He almost missed his stop for being so lost in thought, but Banmon shifting around in the bag to get his attention, indeed, got his attention.

Rubber soles touched down on the pavement of the sidewalk, and he looked around to take the surroundings in as he gently hefted the straps of his duffel bag up over his shoulder.  
The grey skies had started to precipitate at last. Rain was pretty much an expected feature of the area, because that's what you got when you lived in the pacific northwest, so the people on the street were split fairly evenly between those who carried umbrellas at all times for just such an occasion, and those who were so used to the rain that they didn't mind getting wet.

Peter was among the latter group.

It also appeared that he wasn't the only person here to do a bit of rubbernecking. As he took off at a casual pace towards the parking garage, he overheard a couple conversations.

"Did you hear about what happened? Apparently some jokesters had some fun with some smoke and mirrors, got everyone all bothered..."

"... probably just a bunch of pranksters making some fake videos and trying to sell it to the news. I remember when those kids found bigfoot in the park last summer, I ain't buyin' it."

" _Aliens_."

Peter could practically hear Banmon sigh with resignation from her hiding place. "Do you see anything?" her voice was quiet such that he had to strain to hear her, but there was no chance of it being overheard.

"We're gonna be here a while," Peter replied in a mutter, deliberately sounding like he was talking to himself. Nonetheless, a passing man still shot him a strange, not-quite-trusting look.  
Peter continued on, shuffling past groups of people on the street, both people who were here to nose into places they didn't belong and people just going about their Friday, being careful not to jostle Banmon too much. In light of events, he became acutely aware how odd it was for him to be carrying around his best friend in a duffel bag.

(Look-- spend fifteen years and you'll get used to anything, even a ghost being your best friend.)

He had known, or at least figured, that if there was one of Banmon, there had to be more. Maybe not other Banmons, per se -- she was unique, most definitely-- but other _things_. He had accepted that as inevitable a long time ago-- but the idea of actually coming face to face with it was a bit disquieting.

And why _now_?

Peter's wandering feet had led him right up to the parking garage, and he peered up at it over the top of his glasses. Then he looked at it through his glasses, not sure why he bothered looking over them, because his eyesight was absolutely awful.  
"You feeling anything?"  
It was his turn to ask Banmon.

"Go inside?" she said quietly, peering out of the bag to see what she could see. Inside the parking garage, it was darker, with plenty of places to hide-- she might be able to actually come out of the duffel bag to look around herself, if she was careful.  
Luckily for her, Peter was already on the move to do just that.

He waved casually to the man running the booth and began walking up the gently-ramping path; once he was around the first bend, he looked around before sidestepping behind a car. There was nobody here, and nobody coming, so he set his bag down and unzipped it. Banmon peeked her head out and looked around cautiously before she floated up and out of the bag.

This wasn't the first time they had done something like this. If she needed to hide, Banmon... well. She couldn't turn invisible, but she could briefly make herself incorporeal, allowing her to slip, say, through a wall or a floor and out of sight. As they scaled the parking garage, she made sure to keep to the shadows, and ducked behind cars and pillars when she heard a car coming or going. That said, it was midday on a Friday, and many of the people parked here were at work.

"I feel something," Banmon said quietly as they rounded a corner. Though she didn't have a visible mouth, she seemed to be frowning when Peter looked over at her.

"The kind of something that we should avoid or not?"

"I don't know... I feel kind of weird."

"Hold on. Do you hear something?"

Banmon looked around frantically, then pricked up her ears. (Did she even have ears? Not the point.) It was the sound of someone talking-- a female voice, but the words were indistinct. Peter gestured at Banmon to stay hidden, not that she really needed to be told.

 

 

***

"I don't think so, either," Natalie was saying to Raumon, leaning against the passenger door of her car, parked just past the curve in the parking garage's last indoor floor. The window was open so she could talk to Raumon, who was standing on the seat with his arms folded on the door. "We can probably head up soon. Wait. Hold on. Someone's coming."  
Raumon ducked down; Natalie looked down the way to where she had heard voices from, and saw a blonde young man in glasses just about to come around the bend. He looked kind of familiar, but she wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a crowd if you had asked her. How many hipster-y looking guys were there in a college town, after all?

She furrowed her brow in thought, but figured he was probably just someone coming to get his car, so she nodded politely as he passed. He was tight-lipped but nodded in return, hands stuffed in his pockets.  
"Natalie," Raumon whispered frantically, but something else caught Natalie's eye as the boy drew closer.

Behind the young man as he came around the turn was... something, not quite all there. She squinted, and saw... what looked like a flickering white shape, almost like a child in a ghost costume for Halloween.  
It is important to note that Banmon, who -- drifting behind the pillars, ducking in and out of the ceiling when she had to pass between gaps -- was still neatly out of sight. She was not what Natalie was seeing.  
This was something else-- and this was what Raumon was trying to get Natalie's attention for, because her digivice, sitting on the center console of her car, had lit up. The white shape was growing ever closer to the stranger, and it reared back a hand like it was preparing to attack, and the lights began to flicker--

"Look out!" Natalie cried, but as soon as she spoke, Raumon had already decided that this risk was worth the taking. The little bird vaulted out of the open window and leapt forward, his claws beginning to glow purple.

"Symptom Claw!" Raumon yelled, slashing out at the ghostly white shape. In the space of a second, Natalie was immediately trying to come up with explanations she could offer this young man-- but Raumon wasn't the only one making a pre-emptive move.

"Breathtaker!" an unfamiliar female voice cried, and a pair of stretchy-looking, glowing-white hands emerged out of the shadows to strike at the phantom.

The young man whipped around in surprise, his scarf trailing as he turned.

As both Raumon and the glowing hands impacted the phantom, it became much more solid-- and was, indeed, a white sheet ghost, with tattered edges, black eyes, and a mouth full of far too many teeth; five to one it was a Digimon. Luckily, it seemed about as able to take a punch as its shroud would imply-- both sets of glowing hands sent it tumbling like a sheet in a stiff breeze, rolling backwards down the incline. Raumon had leapt back, intending to get out of sight as quickly as possible, but--

Natalie did a double take. The young man was remarkably cool-headed about all of this, as he looked from the crumpled white shroud to Raumon to-- he looked to the side, and Natalie followed his gaze. Out from behind a pillar and looking quite apologetic was a little bandage-wearing ghost.  
(Little, like, the size of a small child. Shh.)

Raumon, however, was not so easily distracted. His eyes were fixed firmly on the little creature, who was rising back up to-- well. Not its _feet_.

It glared and gritted its many teeth, looking between Banmon and Raumon.

"This was going to be easy for me, you know," it said, sounding rather put out. "But no, you had to have _backup_. Hell's Hand!" it yelled, and from underneath its shroud, out shot a shadowy hand -- and was aimed straight for Banmon.

"Shadow Shot!" Banmon yelped, as a blob of black energy appeared in each of her hands. She lobbed both at the appendage flying towards her, and it seemed that she had the right idea-- when her attack hit the more hostile ghost's, they cancelled each other out, dissipating harmlessly. She, of course, had the advantage of having one left over-- and it flew on and knocked the strange digimon back again, right into Raumon.

"Dark Ring!" Raumon yelled, holding his hands out in front of him. Right under where the ghost was crumpled on the ground, a purple spell circle appeared, and it flickered with purple fire. It surged with energy and the strange ghost made a truly unpleasant kind of noise before--

It was gone.

It straight up vanished right into thin air, and everything went quiet for a few seconds.  
The awkward silence between the two pairs was downright palpable.

"So," Natalie said -- ventured, really, after a few moments, "you too?" She was judging by how Banmon was ducking behind Peter for security to figure that maybe, just maybe, they knew each other. She was, of course, correct.

Peter looked from Banmon to Natalie. "Yep," he said with a nod, putting his hands in his pockets. He seemed to be just doing a casual stance, but one hand came back out, gripping the little black-and-white device.

"It's just a regular party, isn't it?" Raumon said, looking at it as he walked over to Natalie's side.

"I'm Peter. This is Banmon." He gestured at her; she half-ducked behind his back.

"Natalie, and Raumon," Natalie said, pointing to herself and the bird in turn.

There was a brief pause before Peter nodded. "I kind of knew that. At least the latter part, didn't really know your name." When Natalie looked understandably disquieted, he sighed and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He thought of how to phrase this, and then just said, in a very familiar, deeply bored tone of voice:  
"Four on the floor, if you don't mind."

Natalie squinted at him like he had lobsters growing out of his ears, because, What? But she thought for a moment, and put two and two together, and then, bam, the proverbial lightbulb over her head. "You work at the Lotus!" Beat. "... you overheard us at the Lotus?" Another beat, wherein her expression grew disconcerted. "I'm kind of creeped out."

"You were talking about Digimon," Peter said, casting a glance at Raumon. "It's not the most common word. I didn't expect to find you here, if that helps."

Natalie shrugged one shoulder. It only kind of made things better. Still, kinda creepy, don't you think?

"We thought that maybe, after what he heard you talking about, and then we saw on the news..." Banmon said, and trailed off, looking to Peter to back her up.

"That there might be some kind of a lead, here. Which there was," Peter said, lifting a hand and pointing to indicate where Casper The Far Less Friendly Ghost had been. "Which I assume is why you're here?"

Natalie nodded slowly, putting her hands on her hips. "Yeah. I wanted to see if there was anything I could work together, like some kind of common element. It was kind of a pipe dream that, well..."

"That maybe another digimon would show up. We kind of got a two-for-one," Raumon said, pointing at Banmon, who again ducked behind Peter.

"Sorry about that," Peter said, shrugging his shoulders.

"They took care of it, though," Natalie said, looking between the bird and the ghost. She had never thought of Raumon as the type who'd be prepared to throw down in a fight, but he was full of surprises.  
(Peter was even more surprised, as Banmon often flinched when the television was up too loud, let alone prepared to... well.)

"More or less," Raumon said with a shrug, nodding. He felt vaguely uneasy still, but he couldn't tell why. Maybe it was just the nerves from interacting with another digimon? After all, he had spent fifteen years without seeing one, and now, a week later...  
(That feeling he got about Desmon, he felt again here with Banmon. Maybe familiarity was the wrong word, but maybe like... a powerful sense of deja vu? It wasn't a particularly comfortable feeling.)

(It's hard to say if it'd be a comfort if he knew that Banmon felt the same way-- without the having the same feeling about the bat digimon she had never met, of course.)

"Do you want to relocate?" Peter said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I don't feel like this is the most conducive place to hold a conversa--"

As if on cue, the sound of a car approaching echoed throughout the structure. Raumon ducked back towards Natalie's car, while Banmon dove underneath it to hide there-- or rather, she dove _through_ it, and re-solidified once she was hidden underneath it in the shadows.  
A red mini-van stopped just shy of coming around the curve, just before the group; they waited for the middle-aged woman to get out of her car and go into the stairwell before they picked back up.

"...tion," Peter finished dryly.

"We could go up to the roof," Natalie suggested almost immediately, looking up to the ceiling and putting her hands on her hips. "People shouldn't be parking up there for a few hours so we shouldn't have to deal with too much." When Natalie looked back down, Peter was looking blankly at her. He didn't say anything or look terribly confused, but the _how are you sure_ didn't need to be said aloud. "I read the sign on the way in. It doesn't open to the public until 5 pm." She and Raumon had been planning on going up themselves before they got a double helping of ghosts, hence her quick decision.

Peter looked to Banmon; she looked around nervously, from Peter to Raumon to Natalie and considering-- and realizing that her friend was going to make his decision based on hers.  
"... alright," she said after a short pause, and Peter nodded, first at her, and then at Natalie.

Natalie picked Raumon up by looping her arms under his armpits. "Like we talked about: if anyone asks," she said, "you're a stuffed animal and I got you at the fair."

"How undignified," Raumon lamented, but maybe not-so-secretly, he wasn't too opposed to being carried.

By the time they finished this exchange, Peter was already beginning to walk; Banmon was close on his heels. In his head, a million synapses were firing and he was sorting out all of the minutae of what had just happened. He was quite actively formulating what questions to ask and what to look for.  
What of this showed, though? Not a lot, aside from him shoving his hands in his pockets.

"You tell me, Raumon," Natalie said quietly to the bird she was holding, shaking her head. "Is the total lack of surprise at all of this a male thing?"

 

 

***

Up to the roof of the parking garage they went. The marks on the concrete were still there and didn't seem to be terribly willing to be cleaned up. They realized this not because _they_ tried to clean it up, but because cleaning crew were on the scene when they got up to the top level.  
Banmon hid in her duffel bag and Raumon went limp, but as they and the maintenence were the only people there and the latter seemed much more invested in their jobs, nobody really looked twice if they continued to talk to the digimon and each other.

Natalie took note that Peter was at least less abrasive than Xander was, but far less direct. They talked a bit, much the same questions that Natalie had answered for Xander in the Lotus, but restated so that Peter could hear without, you know, eavesdropping. Natalie asked if Peter had encountered anything on his own-- any digimon, if his little doohickey had activated, any information at all.  
The biggest bit of new information that Natalie had to share was that, if Xander was to be trusted (and though Natalie found him deeply frustrating she didn't have reason to think he'd lie) Saberdramon had only paid attention to them when they went after it-- a distinct contrast from how Yasyamon had seemed to be actively seeking her and Raumon out.

Banmon stayed mostly quiet except to answer questions directed at her; Raumon similarly remained fairly quiet, preferring to take in as much of the conversation as he could. Natalie sent a few texts to Xander, but she got no reply; as he had said, he was Very Busy today, so she expected no less, or perhaps no more.  
Before they could really dig into the nitty gritty, though, Raumon grew heavy and Banmon grew slightly antsy. Deciding that was as good a sign as any to part ways, they did what all civilized people do: exchanged messenger handles so they could communicate like _real people_ instead of face to face.

They both tossed a final look at the frustrated maintenance workers as they made to go back down. If not for the black marks and the handful of people who caught it on camera, it was almost like it had never happened.

Of course, there's something missing from this.

It's important to note that no matter how much they discussed, all of them had missed a vital fact-- what Natalie and Raumon had failed to notice, as they had only fought one Digimon before, and what Peter and Banmon simply couldn't know:  
That hostile ghost digimon hadn't exploded into light; it had vanished without a trace.

 

 

***

It was later in the day, around three-thirty, when Peter returned home. The moment they were in the door, Banmon phased and drifted out of her duffel bag without even waiting for it to be unzipped.

"Hey," Ian said with a half-wave as soon as the door was closed. He was seated on one end of the godawful-ugly couch, his laptop perched on the arm thereof. Banmon nodded her acknowledgemen, but was quick to return to the relative safety of the bedroom.

Peter grunted by way of greeting and took a seat on the other end of the couch, setting the now-empty duffel bag down next to it with one hand and getting his phone out with the other.  
"Don't you have work today?" Peter asked; Ian looked at the clock on his computer. Ian's job occasionally landed him with weird shifts, so it was kind of a crapshoot what times he'd be working on any given day.

"Not until like, six."

"So you won't be back until, what?"

"Two? Ish. Clear out the dancing girls before I get back."

"Right," Peter said, rolling his eyes. On his phone, his messenger app pinged with a push notification--the reception in the parking garage had been garbage (pronounce 'garbage' to rhyme with 'garage' for best effect) and it seemed that her contact request had only now gone through. "I'll be sure to make it child-friendly again before you get back."

"Attaboy."

Peter shook his head and didn't say anything for a moment as he thumbed over the _accept_ option. "You happen to notice anything weird going on lately?"

"I work front desk at a hotel. I'm pretty sure I checked in two eloping couples and a meth addict yesterday. Weird is probably literally part of my job description."

So that was a no, then. Fair enough. He hadn't actually expected that much, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

They spent the next couple hours in the relative silence on the couch. 'Relative silence' meaning Peter on his phone because he couldn't be bothered to go get his computer, Ian on his laptop on the other side of the couch, and a binge-stream of old sitcoms providing background noise on the TV. Banmon had retreated to Peter's room and was staying there, having been quite peopled out for the next millennium.

Five-forty-five came around. Ian threw deuces as he walked out the door, and Peter finally migrated back into his room, leaving the television on.

 

 

***

After a couple hours of spending his day off in as productive a way as possible (watching videos and browsing social media), Peter couldn't help but get poking his nose back into things, but he had a limited number of options.

This is how he ended up doing exactly what Banmon had advised him against doing-- reading the comments on the news article. Banmon, who often would drift nearby to read over his shoulder-- well.  
"Oh, no," she had said, half distressed and half exasperated, covering her face with her hands and shaking her head as she drifted over to the bed instead, where she remained to the present, curled up almost like a sleeping cat.

Peter couldn't help himself from looking at every angle, though; he wanted as full a picture as he could, wanted to see if there was any information he could glean from mispelled comments and spam advertisements.

 _yeah,_ one comment went, _and my dog can talk and shoot laser beams. where's the news van in my driveway? it's obviously just some cg student trying to make use of their degree lol try harder_

 _aliens_ was the full text of another. Peter was noticing a theme.

_dudes calm down its just a publicity stunt for that shitty new michael bay movie_

It was getting on ten o' clock. Peter was right in the middle of reading an impressively long diatribe about _its thanks to these no good lazy entitled millennials and their participation trophies that--_ when his screen distorted like someone was holding a magnet to a CRT monitor-- the problem, of course, being that his laptop was not a CRT montior.  
And then, as soon as it had happened, it returned to normal in the blink of an eye.

Peter raised an eyebrow in vague concern, and waggled his mouse.

"Peter?" Banmon said, a bit nervous. Which... honestly, was pretty normal for her, but still. Paired with the oddness--

"Mm?" he said, turning to look her, and immediately noticed that her eyes were aimed somewhere about a foot to his right. He followed, and.  
Oh.  
Hm.  
That little device? That he had returned to its place on his desk? (That he _really_ needed a catchier name for?)

It was totally lighting up.  
And what's-her-name had said...  
... hm. Concerning.

He picked the digivice up and stood up, looking down at it like it might actually have an answer or two this time. And you know what? It did. There was a menu option that hadn't been available to him before-- and when he pressed that button, the screen sprung to life with the radar.

And there was certainly a little dot on the radar, drawing closer.

"... well, shit," Peter said in a perfect deadpan. He sat still, like a total putz, for about a second before snapping into action-- that is to say, leapt to his feet and got his shoes on.

You never realize how weird your life actually is until you're running out the front door at ten PM because a magical device from the sky says that a monster is coming, and you and your little monster friend may be the only ones nearby qualified to determine if it's hostile or not.

You know, this was probably not the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him.  
(It certainly wasn't the weirdest that was going to happen to him. This would soon seem downright quaint, but that's for another day.)

He also realized only as he was heading out the front door that he had no idea what he was doing, but screw it, he'd do it live.  
Banmon, for her part, direly hoped that this wasn't his plan, but knew better than to expect that it wasn't.

Peter kept the digivice in his hand and referenced the radar as he moved; an inquisitive touch of the dot on the radar brought up a little window displaying _Bakemon - Champion level_. However, that wasn't a lot of help; when he and Banmon stepped into the empty lot, with its piles of sand and small tower of bricks and half-derelict concrete foundation overgrowing with grass, he couldn't see anything, even as the little blinking dot was presumably right on top of them.

This did not inspire a whole lot of confidence.

Peter frowned and looked around; Banmon was trying to make sure she could duck under some form of cover if she had to.

"What the hell," Peter said, squinting at the radar screen and at the empty lot around them. Unless dirt was really threatening, there was nothing here.  
(Didn't that girl say that the other guy had said something about bringing up information...? Fucked if he could remember it right now.)

"Maybe it's broken...?" Banmon suggested quietly, looking around as well-- a bit more cautiously than Peter's vague annoyance.

And then, something happened that put both of them on their guard: the street lamps flickered.

"Ghost Chop!"  
A white shape phased out of nowhere and struck Banmon, slashing diagonally with a shrouded hand and sending her flying forward-- she almost collided with a small pile of bricks, but she had the foresight (panic) to phase through them.

Peter was quick to turn around, and right there in front of them, it was exactly the type of ghost they had seen earlier in the parking garage-- a white shroud and a too-large mouth curled into a snarl, with empty black eyes.

"Another one?" he muttered, squinting, but as soon as he said it, he knew -- or at least, supposed -- that he was was wrong. He stood his ground as Banmon flew up beside him in record time.

"No," Banmon said, and if she had a brow, she'd have furrowed it. "It's-- it's the same one, I think. Maybe we didn't--?"  
Defeat it properly?  
Regardless-- their hunch was right. This Bakemon and the ghost they had fought earlier? One and the same.

"You've been making my life real difficult, you know," Bakemon said, distain in its voice. "First I try to get you alone, then you have _backup_ , and then you go running off to who knows where and make me _look all over_ \--"

Yep. This was definitely the same Bakemon.  
Banmon gathered up her courage to interrupt.  
"Shadow Shot!" she cried, throwing one shadowy orb and then the other at Bakemon.

Bakemon was prepared for it this time, and flickered out of sight just long enough to avoid the attack, then phased right back in.  
"Shadow Shot!" Banmon said again, but to the same effect as before. Without the element of surprise and backup from Raumon, she was a bit more outmatched by the other ghost.  
"But fine! I could wait! I'd waited long enough, what was a few hours more," Bakemon said as it flickered back to full corporeal-ness (totally a word).  
Peter frowned and furrowed his brow, looking between the two ghosts. His words were... there was something there, he was sure of it, and he wasn't entirely paying attention as he began to puzzle over the hostile ghost's words.

"What are you talking about?" Banmon said, not taking her eyes off of Bakemon. "If you wanted something, you could just ask--"

"Hell's Hand!" Bakemon yelled instead of explaining, throwing out a hand and, just as it had done in the parking garage, a clammy hand emerged from under its shroud and stretched out-- but this time, it was aiming its attack towards Peter instead of Banmon.

That certainly got Peter out of his own head-- as did what happened next.

"Breathtaker!" Banmon yelled almost as soon as Bakemon finished calling its own attack. Her hands, glowing white, intercepted Bakemon's-- but even with her using two limbs against Bakemon's one, and making the mistake of using her limbs instead of a projectile, she had put herself at a disadvantage. Bakemon grabbed her around what may as well have been her wrists (fabric, remember) and dragged her back towards itself.

"Banmon!" Peter yelled, emoting as much as he ever did. Before he knew what he was doing, he threw out his hand. Banmon reached out and grabbed a hold of the outstretched hand, but so did Bakemon, reaching out its other shadowy hand to intercept--

And in that moment, the empty lot was filled with the most unholy screeching as Peter's digivice began to swirl with pure white light. Peter internally apologized to the people who actually lived in the house next to this lot, while also thanking them for apparently not looking outside.

The noise died mercifully quickly as that same light surrounded Banmon, and Bakemon let go of her like she was a hot potato.

 

 

"Banmon, drive evolve to..."

Banmon grew in size until her smoky, snakelike body was well over fifteen feet long from the top of her head to the tip of her tail. The trailing ends of her scarf that made up her hands began to grow rapidly into large, club-like arms, black from the elbow down, and decorated with metallic golden accents. From the ends of these new paw-like limbs, three sharp white claws grew and glistened in the moonlight.

The buttons on her hood vanished, leaving holes in their wake; as small fabric wings sprouted from the back of the base of her hood, the bandages around her torso morphed into a white robe-like garment with golden accents. Her eyes, still pinpricks of white in her shadowed, smoky face, shone even brighter from within the dark as a skull-like mask covered her face. She slashed her arms through the air and let loose a cry that sounded melodic and sad.

"Banshemon!"

 

 

The newly-christened Banshemon looked as surprised as Bakemon did for a split second, before she realized she had no time to waste. Not only were they making a lot of noise, it would be harder to hide and deny it if anyone spotted them-- and far, far more importantly?  
Bakemon had tried to attack Peter.

"Banshee's Call!" she cried, and all around her, little white spirits began to drift out of the ground. They had vaguely humanoid shapes, with what might have been faces and long, gaunt arms, with their bodies trailing off into ghost tails much like Banshemon herself.  
It was hard to get a good look at them, though, because they began to fly at Bakemon.

Bakemon itself was frozen to the spot with something between fear and confusion-- and so didn't get out of the way when the little white spirits rushed him, making a quiet wailing noise as they shot through the air, and they exploded on impact with Bakemon, each one nudging it backwards and clearly causing it pain.

Peter didn't _gape_ but he could feel the surprise showing on his face. Not just at the attack itself, which was almost mesmerizing to watch-- but at the fact that Banmon (Banshemon?) had acted so swiftly, decisively.

"No fair!" Bakemon said indignantly, raising its arms up. "Hell's Hand!"

Once more, the shadowy hands extended out to grab a hold of Banshemon; they grabbed her, as she couldn't phase out in time, but instead of rendering her helpless, she lifted her own arms to grapple with them. Bakemon snarled and bared its teeth, clearly straining to keep its shadowy hands manifested as Banshemon held her own and held her ground.

"It can't take a hit!" Peter said, thinking back to the parking garage. Raumon and Banmon had been able to scare it off-- its attack was far better than its own constitution.

"No comments from the peanut gallery!" Bakemon snapped, but in that moment, Bakemon was distracted, and that was all she needed. With a surge of effort, she wrestled the shadowy hands off of herself. They dissipated harmlessly, and now that her hands were free, she had other plans.

"Spirit Ripper!" she cried, and her claws began to glow-- and grow. Encased in white light, they grew as long as sabers and she slashed out with one hand at Bakemon, with no backup from a little black bird or her own little white spirits backing her up this time.  
Bakemon abandoned its attack, and instead elected to try to phase out just as it had done for her Shadow Shot-- but this time, it wasn't successful. Banshemon's claws passed right through the space where Bakemon was, yes, but when they did--

Bakemon returned to full visibility the moment the claws passed through its space, and it snarled, opening its mouth wide.

"No-- _fair! No fair!_ I was going to be the one to--"

And just like that, Bakemon began to glow white. It began to distort, and pixellate, and in a flash of white light, pixellated-looking motes of light scattered, and the lot was empty except for a young man and his much, much friendlier ghost.

Banshemon's claws returned to their normal size and luminosity, and her arms hung limp at her sides like they were simple fabric yet again. She slumped down like she was sighing, and she hung in the air where she 'stood', her long tail swirling like smoke.

"... well," Peter said, after a few moments, which immediately made Banshemon lift her head and turn around.

"Sorry!" Banshemon said immediately, growing suddenly self-conscious. Peter raised an eyebrow at her; though she had been uncharacteristically assertive mere moments before, it was clear that she was still... well. Banmon, even by a different name. His expression softened and he gave her a look that communicated the _it's fine_ without saying it.  
"I don't know what--" she said, looking down at herself. "Happened?" Her voice turned up at the end, in vague confusion hence the question mark.

"It's fine," Peter said, ending up saying it out loud anyway. He looked at where Bakemon had floated, frowning. "Do you have any idea what it was talking about?"

Banshemon shook her head with a shrug of what was going to pass for her shoulders. "No, I--"  
Coming around the turn, the headlights of a car shone bright; Banshemon squeaked and looked around for cover. There was nothing that could cover her in her new size, and like a child who thinks if she couldn't see you you couldn't see her, she lifted her hands to cover her face.

The weird thing was? In that moment, Banshemon flickered almost entirely out of sight. The car passed; at best, they were giving Peter a weird look for standing out here at night, but they saw no giant ghost floating mere feet away from him.  
Banshemon spread her claws out to peek through them, but she realized that she didn't need to, as she could see through them just fine. Seeing the car retreating away, she looked around, and she returned to her full visibility.

"You okay?" Peter asked.

"... yeah, I think," Banshemon said after a moment, nodding her head.  
It was in that moment that she was consumed by white light for the second time, and just like that, she had returned to the much smaller, travel-sized Banmon.

"Why is it always ghosts with me?" Peter sighed, massaging his temples even as he was grateful to see his friend back to normal. He pocketed the digivice, and signalled for Banmon to follow him home.

He'd explain this to Natalie in the morning. Now, though? He was a little bit sick of ghosts. You know. Other than the one he lived with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's our first three episodes!  
> I already have the next two written, so I'll see y'all again on April second. (Or on the first, if you're a cool kid who checks the site.)


	4. Episode 04: Hurricane Streets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In accordance with this chapter, there's new profiles and new art, both fanmade and by me, to check out over at the site (recon.digimonreset.com), cough cough wink wink.
> 
> Chapter 5 forthcoming on the 15th! This whole having chapters pre-written in a buffer is nice. Why haven't I ever tried this before?

It had been a few days since the Bakemon incident; since then, as far as any of them could tell, no digimon had shown up. That is, none of their digivices had lit up, no weird power surges had happened. None of the small subsect of Atlas Park citizens who were now obsessed with the idea of catching something on video had anything, and no news stories happened.

It was a bit past one PM the following Tuesday. It was only now that all three of them -- Natalie, Xander, and Peter -- were free to meet up in the first meeting of the Digimon Response Squad Task Force Go.  
Name pending.

They were seated on the grass in the Atlas Park City Park, near the stream; the digimon, wanting to stay nearby and out of sight, had their methods. 'Their methods' meant 'hiding in the boughs of a tree about ten feet away'. Admittedly, it was a bit of a cloudy, grey day -- as was pretty common -- so there weren't too many people out and about, which was a boon.

It was good to have little conveniences, because trying to coordinate the three of them had been an adventure in and of itself. Natalie had texted Xander about what had happened only to get messages from Peter about the Bakemon; Natalie had to ask for Peter's number and brought him into the text conversation, but keeping up with things on their phones grew troublesome, and Xander had to give out his messenger handle and--  
Well.  
Natalie was swiftly coming to the conclusion that putting Xander and Peter in the same vicinity as each other was a captial-M Mistake.

"Just curious: do you have anything useful to say, or do you just like the sound of your own voice?" Peter said flatly; Xander's lip curled into a derisive, but subtle, sneer.

"Hey, I dunno, man. Don't you have a vinyl collection to wank over? Maybe a few more scarves to flip pretentiously over a latte?"

"Oh my god," Natalie said, burying her face in her hands.

Over in the tree, the digimon were watching their friends and getting along substantially better.  
"Oh no," Banmon was saying on repeat like a broken record, covering her head with her hands. "Oh no, ohhh no."

"I think it's going well!" Desmon chirped at the exact moment that Xander gestured at his crotch with both hands in a 'suck it' motion.

"... it's certainly going," Raumon said, scratching nervously at his beak. He paused, watching as Natalie commandeered the conversation over top of the bickering, but he could make out the words.

"She's doing god's work tryin' to rein them in like that," Desmon said, obviously able to hear much better than either of her compatriots.

"They're certainly... clashing," Banmon said, curling her smoky tail around the branch she was laying on. "Maybe this wasn't a great idea?"

"Naw," Desmon reassured the little ghost. "Xander's not that bad. He's just starting an argument for the sake of an argument. He does that. Clearly it's 'cos I'm not there to tell him to lighten up."

"It worries me," Banmon said with a sigh.

"It'll be fine," Raumon said, and his voice was a bit more comforting than Desmon's. "They're just going to butt heads for a little bit, probably." Banmon didn't seem entirely convinced, though, so next option:  
Distraction.  
"This is pretty close to where I met Natalie, I think," he said, looking around; they were fairly close to the bridge. The reason they had come there so frequently wasn't just its tranquility; it had a special significance.

This picqued both of the other digimons' interest. "Do you remember anything before that?" Banmon ventured; when Raumon shook his head after a moment of thought, she nodded. "... me, neither."

"Same here," Desmon said with a nod, stretching her arms out; Xander had given her the rundown on his own conversation with Natalie from the Lotus. "That's a pretty big co-inky-dink, don't you think?"

"Not the phrase I'd use, maybe," Raumon said, but he nodded. "Though I certainly feel like. Hm." He paused to think. "Not like I know you? But I've seen you before, I think."

Desmon's ears twitched. "Ooh. Cryptic."

"I think I follow," Banmon said.

Back at the circle, with Natalie actually taking control, Xander and Peter were snipping at each other a little less-- admittedly, mostly by using Natalie as an intermediate instead of actually talking to each other, but you know, it was progress of a sort.  
"... yours seemed to be more feral, then?" Natalie prompted Xander.

"If it had anything to say, it didn't speak up fast enough," he said, nodding and shrugging one shoulder.

"From the sounds of it, the ones we dealt with," Peter said, speaking to Natalie, "seemed to be a bit more directed. The Bakemon talked about following us."

Natalie frowned and nodded, folding her arms. "And I don't think it was a coincidence that Yasyamon decided to stop on my roof, but the-- what was it?"

"Saberdramon, but yeh," Xander cut in. "Unless there's someone secretly living in the parking garage, I don't think the chicken was looking for much. Wrong place at the wrong time or something like that. Might not've noticed it was there until the what's-it-called went off, or until it busted something."

Natalie nodded, thinking for a moment. "Where do you guys live?" Beat. "Like. Roughly. I don't need your addresses, that'd be creepy."

"Uni district," Peter answered first.

"Northside," Xander said; he meant that he lived on the north side of the Harper River.

"And I live over more this way," Natalie said, pointing in the direction that her apartment building lay. "That's... not a bad spread, if something happens," she said, rubbing her chin in thought. The only problem was that there was her and Peter on the south side, and only Xander to the north.

"Hey," Desmon said to the other two digimon, her ears perking up. "Do you guys hear something?"

It was a stupid question, but still, they were on high alert quite all of a sudden.

 

***

At this point, we need to backtrack a little bit-- not far, just about a half hour, to half-past noon.

On the north side of the river, a girl was walking up her family's home's front drive with a small backpack slung over her shoulder.  
The house had gotten a bit crowded ever since the end of the school year, as her older brother was back in town for the summer, and she had gotten kind of used to the extra space over the past nine months. It would only get worse once her younger brother, still in his last year of middle school, let out for the summer next week.

On the other hand: she was coming back from a morning half-shift cashiering, so she'd take a bit of a cramped house over going back to dealing with customers, any day of the week.

She unlocked the door and poked her head inside, calling:  
"Hey, I'm home! Anyone alive in here?"

"Hey Meg," a male voice said from over on the couch; her older brother, Brendan, was lounging there, with the TV going, but he muted it as he craned his neck to look at her over the back of said couch. "Mom's out. Store or something, I wasn't really paying attention."

"Figures," Meg said with a one-armed shrug, walking inside and taking off her shoes. So their mom was out, James was still in school--  
(What a beautiful day not to be in K-12 anymore. Every day was a beautiful day not to be in K-12 anymore.)  
"You seen Oremon around?" she asked, looking over at her brother even as she made for the stairway.

"He's been acting weird," Brendan said, propping up his head on his knuckles. "He's been even less talkative than he usually is."

Meghan blinked, stopping mid-step. "So... what, has he imploded? Seeing as that's literally the only way that's possible?"

Brendan made the universal inarticulate _iunno_ noise, and Meghan sighed, continuing her trek up the stairs. The television began to chatter again, but by the time she was at the top of the stairs and gone down the hall to her room, it was barely a distant mumble. She shouldered open the door, and was met with--

You know, most people would consider the sight of a four-foot-tall upright goat a bit distressing to find in one's bedroom. This didn't seem to register at all to Meghan as she crossed into her bedroom.

Oremon was like nothing Meg had ever seen; he was black with a cream muzzle and underbelly, and with angular red markings on his hips, forearms, and forehead. His forearms were club-like and pale gold; his legs below the shin were fluffy and the same creamy colour as his belly. His hooves were big but the ones on his hands didn't seem to inhibit his dexterity; the ones on his feet made a clip-clop sound on the hardwood floors. His horns, which he had two pairs of (one pair was longer and higher on his head, and a smaller pair down low) had destroyed more pillows than he'd have ever admitted.  
Oh, and _he was a four-foot tall upright goat that talked._ You know. Minor details.

"Hi. We need to go out," he said in short order, his voice gruff and clipped.

Meghan blinked for the billionth time.  
"Can it wait for me to change out of my work pants?"

Oremon didn't respond for a moment, before:  
"... yes."

Oremon excused himself so Meg could change. She watched him as he strode out of the bedroom, arms akimbo. See, while clipped and gruff was basically his M.O., he usually at least paced himself a little bit, so this _was_ kind of weird.  
"'Go out'," Meghan repeated, speaking loudly enough that Oremon could hear her through the door as she changed out of her work clothes. "You _do_ realize that's a total pain, right? I don't think I can pass you off as James in a fursuit again."  
Look. Desperate times, desperate measures.

"It's important," Oremon said, leaning against the door, folding his arms.

"Dare I ask what _it_ is?" Meg said as she straightened her shirts. She opened up the window to let some of the late-spring air in before she crossed back over to open the door. Oremon stumbled noticably as his balance was thrown off by the door opening behind him. She stifled a laugh; he righted himself quickly. He turned to face her and acted as though nothing had happened.

"There's a digimon nearby."

Oremon held out one hand with his palm upturned. He was holding the little plastic-like device; the faceplate of hers was orange, and the little silver charm dangling off the end looked kind of like an anvil or a hammer of some sort. Oremon had been fascinated with it and had spent more time poking at it than she had, but his hooves were not particularly conducive to operating the small buttons, so he hadn't been able to really futz with it too much.  
Meghan's eyebrows shot up so high they practically vanished under her bangs. Oremon had been on high alert recently-- ever since that news report on Thursday he had been obstinantly sure that there something was happening, but he had yet to actually make such a clear declaration.

And, indeed, the screen was lit up of its own accord, and it was open to the radar screen; Meghan took it in hand and looked at the screen, and if it were possible for her eyesbrows to go further up, they would have.  
At the center, there was a faintly orange shape that looked like the silhouette of Oremon's head, but that wasn't what was important. What _was_ important was that there was a little white dot on the screen -- and it was moving in a way that could only be described as _erratic_ if it slowed down significantly. It was zigging and zagging, but it was staying within range of the radar-- mostly. It dipped out here and there, then zipped right back in.

She furrowed her brow, though, as a thought hit her, and she looked up from the digivice.

"Brendan said you'd been acting weird all morning, though?"

"I don't see how it's any of his business," Oremon said bluntly, folding his arms yet again. Meghan responded to this by bumping him gently on the forehead with her knuckles.

"Can't you cut the tough guy act for two minutes?"

Oremon snorted and shook his head to shake Meghan's hand away. The tough guy act was practically integral to his personality, but that didn't meant Meghan didn't give him gentle hell about it on the regular.  
Needless to say, he did not cut it.

"I've had a feeling all day. This is probably why," he said after a moment, his ears flicking. He frowned, and looked towards the window. "We're going," he said; it wasn't a question, but he still looked to her for confirmation.

She sighed through her nose and looked at the digivice. The radar dot was still going this way and that, and it was at least _concerning_ if not worrying. Sure, it didn't say it was a digimon, but Oremon usually didn't make declarations unless he was willing to stand by them.  
"Alright."  
This would have been so much easier if he had just stayed Billymon, but they'd have to make do. She cast another look down at the radar on the digivice and was shocked to see the dot approaching their location.

Oremon's eyes had also fallen to the digivice, apparently, because the next thing Meghan saw was Oremon practically leaping towards the window.  
"Wait--!" she yelped as Oremon grounded his hands on the sill. She half expected him to start trying to get the screen off, or worse, just straight up go through it, but he managed to control himself. Meg, of course, followed him to the window.

Meg looked at Oremon; his brow was furrowed, and his eyes narrowed. She followed the line of his gaze to the top of a power line past their neighbor's back yard.

Sitting there was a white... _thing_. It had a tail nearly as big as its body, and ears almost as big as its head. It had eyes as big as tea saucers -- big enough to see from this distance -- and she could swear that it made eye contact with her.

It tilted its head and flicked its tail, perked up its ears, then crouched down and took off running down a power line--  
Right towards their backyard.

Oremon took off right on out the bedroom door, and Meghan had a feeling that if she didn't follow, she would see him emerge into the yard mere moments later anyway.  
She was hot on his heels; Oremon was, indeed, heading down the hall, not running but doing a focused fast-walk, and Meghan was able to catch up by the time he got to the top of the stairs.

"What's with the walking-with-purpose?" Brendan asked over his shoulder, having heard both Meghan's footsteps and Oremon's hooves on the hardwood.

"Long story?" Meghan tried, grabbing her sneakers as she turned the corner near the front door. (Tellingly, Oremon paused a half a moment so she could slip them on, which she did clumsily and hopping on one foot so as to not have to stop.)

Slight detour aside, they crossed through the living room, through the kitchen, and out the kitchen door into the back yard.

The little white thing was perched comfortably, if precariously, on a power line. Up close, the details were much easier to make out.

It was relatively small, only a little bit bigger than a particularly tubby cat. It was almost entirely white, with a black patch on its tummy and three acid-green triangles -- one on each shoulder, and one in the middle of that black patch. It had tiny, useless-looking wings; it had big blunt claws on its hands and feet, and short little horns on its forehead. What looked like a black collar sat around its neck, and on the front, a featureless-but-shiny hot-pink orb hung from a D-ring.  
Its eyes were vividly bright, acid-green and hot pink, and shone brightly as it stared intently down at Oremon and Meghan.

Oremon, for his part, duh his hooves into the grass and took a defensive stance. Meghan hung back a few feet, clutching the digivice in her hand.

"Hi!" the thing said in a high-pitched, but at least vaguely masculine, voice.

Blink.

"Uh... hi?" Meghan ventured, not quite sure what the proper protocol was in these situations.

Oremon had no such problems-- or at least, he had a much more decisive plan of action. "Who and what are you?" he said, digging his feet into the grass more and making Meghan vaguely wonder if her mother would complain about him messing up the lawn. Again.

The little white beastie seemed to either not notice or not care that Oremon snorted and glared. "I'm Ratamon!" he said as though that explained everything. "And you are?"

Oremon and Meghan exchanged sidelong glances, and by the time they looked back up, Ratamon had moved.  
Not far, mind, he had just skittered along the power line to be a bit closer to the pair, and they had to crane their necks to look up at him.

"Well, alright, I was just asking a question, but I guess you don't gotta answer right now," he said, nonchalant as anything, and perfectly conversational, as though Oremon wasn't wondering if he could jump high enough to dislodge him without tearing down the power lines.

"I'm-- Meg," Meghan said after a brief, slightly confused silence; she wasn't sure what to make of this thing, and it seemed Oremon wasn't either. "This is--"

"Oremon," the goat said, relaxing only slightly; he didn't want to let his guard down, but there wasn't much good to be done by preparing to throw down too pre-emptively. "You're a digimon."

"Sure am," Ratamon said, fixing his big glossy eyes on Oremon. "Why? Are you looking for other digimon, too?"

"Too?" Meghan said; Oremon's ears perked up in a way more reminiscent of a cat than a goat, kind of an involuntary expresson of interest. "Well-- not really? I don't think?"  
See, the news story from last Friday? Hadn't really come into her bubble, or Oremon's by extension. Without it, the inexplicable little device and now this weird little creature were the only leads either of them had.

"Other digimon?" Oremon cut in, only once Meghan was done talking.

"Oh, yeah!" Ratamon said, pointing in a vaguely south direction with one blunt claw. "There are a bunch of digimon out in the big park on the other side of the water." Beat. "At least, there were a little while ago? I could lead you there, if you wanted!"

Meghan was about to ask how 'little' that while could possibly have been, right until she remembered Ratamon's little dot zipping around the radar's range; the little thing could book it.  
She didn't immediately distrust Ratamon; Oremon, though, needed a few more moments to determine.

"It's just the park, it sounds like?" Meghan reasoned, in a hushed tone of voice. She figured that Ratamon, with those big feathery ears, could probably still hear her anyway, but habit was habit. "It's not like we're being asked to go down a dark alley or anything, and-- you've been feeling weird, right? So I mean..."

"Hmph." Oremon frowned but thought hard, and slowly nodded. "Fine."

Ratamon beamed and almost took off running right then and there.  
"Wait!" Meghan called, not quite in a panic but definitely concerned. "We, uh-- it might be a bit hard for us to follow on foot?"

Ratamon tilted his head.

 

***

A few minutes later, and the pair were following Ratamon by car instead of trying to keep up with the hyperactive little _thing_ on foot.

Oremon kept the radar up on the digivice to make sure they didn't lose Ratamon. The little dot was moving fairly straightforwardly; occasionally they saw him, jittering along power lines and railings, ducking out of sight before anyone could get a good look at him. Thankfully, he did a pretty good job of staying within range.  
Just like he had said -- or at least, what Meghan had assumed he had been referring to -- he was leading them en route to the Atlas Park City Park.

"What do you think about this?" Meghan asked Oremon over her shoulder, looking at the goat sprawled in her back seat in the rear view mirror; the goat grunted before responding.

"He's annoying. But if there are digimon, I want to be the first to know." Too late. "And if he's lying, well, we can't just let him run off on his own. We have to follow him."

Meghan raised an eyebrow that Oremon could see in the mirror. She smiled. "You're as curious as I am."

Oremon grunted and folded his arms. That was a yes.

As they pulled into the park's parking lot, Meg was halfway between excitement and nervousness. Oremon nodded at her, holding up the digivice so she could see its screen; in addition to the little silhouette of his own head in the center and the dot of Ratamon in a tree nearby (waiting patiently -- but not too patiently), there was a small cluster of two or three little dots bunched up a little ways down from the bridge, and both that excitement and that nervousness doubled in an instant.

"You take the path. I'll be nearby."

See, here's the thing. Oremon, for his size, was surprisingly light-footed. If he had strong enough branches to land on, he could make his way pretty easily through trees, so Meghan wasn't too concerned when Oremon, climbing out of the car, made for a tree near the one that Ratamon was currently sitting in, and just like that, if you weren't looking closely enough, you might not even notice him.

Ratamon watched the goat and flicked his tail. "This way!" he said, looking back to Meg--  
But by the time he looked, she was already taking off down the path.

 

***

Raumon and Banmon obviously did not have as good of hearing as Desmon did, but they regardless perked up their ears and listened hard for anything that might have caught Desmon's attention. Aside from the rustling of the branches in the other trees and the discussion happening between their human partners, it was hard to make out anything in particular.

Desmon had been the first to hear, but Banmon was the first to see anything-- it was just a young woman, with red-violet hair and a white v-neck layered over a dark red long-sleeved 3/4ths sleeve shirt. She was moving briskly, but it wasn't _that_ weird to see someone running through the park. After all, that was why they were tucked up here in tree, safe from prying eyes.

"Do you think it's--?" Banmon said. She was watching the girl carefully, and the little ghost's eyes went wide when -- as the girl was drawing closer-- she pulled out and looked down at a little orange device that looked very familiar. Maybe if they were anyone else, they would be forgiven for mistaking it for a cell phone, but... She looked from it, and then right at the tree that the digimon were hiding in.

It was at that moment that Oremon landed in the tree, mere feet away from the branch that the three other digimon were perched on.  
It was at the very next moment that, not expecting to see three digimon in the tree he was jumping into, Oremon lost his footing and fell _out_ of the tree, landing squarely on his ass.

It's raining goats, hallelujah.

Banmon, Raumon, and Desmon stared down at the ground; Xander, Peter, and Natalie were practically shocked into standing up with a start as a large, strange black shape suddenly dropped out of the tree their friends were hiding in. Ratamon, much more stealthily concealed in a different tree, was watching intently.

" _The fuck?_ " Xander said, digging into his pocket. He wasn't the only one -- both Natalie and Peter were also reaching for their digivices, just in case. You only need to fight one giant monster before you're like, _oh, hm, maybe I should be prepared._  
Natalie cast a look over at the girl who was walking by, not sure what to expect--

"Oremon!" Meghan practically yelped, running over to him. Note that at this point, she hadn't noticed the digimon in the tree, and in fact, had hardly even noticed the three other people staring; her focus was solely on Oremon.  
Xander furrowed his brow; Peter squinted; Natalie watched carefully.

"Hey, Raumon, come here," she said, erring on the side of caution.

"Looks like it's a regular party," Desmon remarked from her position up in the tree, causing Meg to snap her attention up. Oremon, a bit dazed and in not the most dignified position, also looked up, and his pupils constricted.

"There goes the cover," Raumon said, looking around to make sure no other people were around before jumping out of the tree. He landed much more far more gracefully than Oremon had. He didn't quite run, but he did make haste to get over to Natalie's side; behind him, Desmon and Banmon, both able to fly (or at least float), drifted more directly over to their humans. Just in case, you know?

Oremon scrambled to his feet and put himself between the group and Meghan, glaring.

"Who are you?" Peter asked, looking between the girl and the goat. Meghan, for her part, was a bit flabberghasted.

"Um... what?" she sputtered, looking between the now-six individuals all staring at her and Oremon. Ratamon had said there were other digimon -- he had said nothing about _people_. Aside from, you know, the people you usually expect to see in public places. "My name's Meghan?" she ventured after a moment.

"She has one of the... things," Banmon said, speaking primarily to Peter. "The devices. I saw it."

"Still doesn't help much, seeing as we barely know what they are," Xander cut in; Peter shot him a sidelong glance but ignored him.

"Is the goat with you?" Natalie said, gesturing at Oremon.

" _Oremon_ ," Oremon said crossly, still standing between Meghan and the others.

"He's definitely a digimon," Raumon said decisively, looking up at Natalie. "I mean, the name just solidifies it."

"We're not looking for trouble--!" Meghan said, holding her hands up, palms out in a kind of _whoa there_ gesture.

"We might be looking for trouble," Oremon said, though luckily not loudly enough to be heard by anyone other than himself and Meghan, who shot him a dirty look, a nonverbal _you're not helping_.  
Unnoticed in all the hubbub, Ratamon had migrated over to the tree that was the cause of all the trouble.

A short round of introductions went around as tensions began to ease. Why, Oremon even relaxed a little bit! They stayed on the lookout for any people coming around, but luckily enough, nobody seemed particularly interested in coming out to the park on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon. The digimon had settled on the grass nearby, on the far side of the humans from the path.

"Why are you here?" Xander asked as he looked at Meghan, about as polite as usual.

"You could _try_ being a little less hostile," Peter muttered.

Xander completely ignored Peter's comment. "I mean, it's not just me who thinks it's weird, though, right?" he said, shrugging. "The first time the three of us meet up, and here comes goat girl out of the blue."

"It _is_ kind of odd," Natalie said, frowning slightly and stroking her chin.

"Oh!" Meghan said, looking around. "Um, there was--"

"Hi!" the voice of Ratamon, familiar only to Meg, said from his position, unseen, in the tree, giving everyone present a start. He popped his head out of the leaves and jumped down, his wings flapping enough to slow his descent a little bit, not that a fall from that small a height would have done much to him.

"This guy," Meghan said after a second, gesturing as Ratamon skittered over to the other digimon. He kept a little bit of distance, but nothing too major.

"Is he with you, too?" Raumon asked, looking between Ratamon and Meghan, the latter of whom frowned and scratched at her face.

"Not... really?"  
This, of course, raised a great many questions. The pressure was on Meghan (and a little bit of Oremon, but he wasn't particularly talkative) to explain herself. She did-- admittedly, it wasn't much, but still, 'a little white monster told me' was at least _an_ explanation for why she and Oremon were here.

"If it knew we were here," Natalie said, looking over at Ratamon, "it must have been here before... did we just not notice it or something?"

"It certainly moves fast enough that I'd call that rational," Peter reasoned, watching how Ratamon was zipping around-- up trees, across the grass, down to the stream, up a street lamp, and back again.

"It needs to calm the fuck down," Xander said. That was as much an agreement as anything.

Meghan had as many questions for them as they did for her, if not more. She hadn't seen any other digimon, and was totally engrossed in hearing about the ones these strangers had encountered, so they gave a quick recap of what they had dealt with so far.

"I didn't know there were other people with digimon," Meghan said, beaming.

"I just wonder how many others we're going to have to party up with," Xander said, leaning back on both his hands.

"It can't be that many, or this wouldn't be the first we'd heard of it." That was courtesy of Peter.

 

***

They parted ways not long after; Natalie, being Natalie, had been first to request contact infromation from Meghan, which she gladly gave. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology (read: cell phones), she was added in to the group messenger chat before leaving the circle. Seeing as they were all headed towards the same parking lot, they didn't give their goodbyes prematurely, instead waiting until they were actually parting ways.

"Did any of you see where Ratamon went?" Meghan asked, looking around. As soon as she asked that, though, a little white shape poked out of a tree-- upside-down. Ratamon had the tip of his huge tail curled around a bough, and he looked at the digimon and humans assembled, waved one hand, and vanished back into the leaves. He hurtled himself upright and took off like a shot.  
Darn; she had wanted to thank him for the tipoff to come here.

"I guess if he's not hurting anyone," Natalie said, arms akimbo, "then we don't have to worry about him."

"I'm sure we'd find out if he was," Desmon said, entirely too cheerfully; Xander rolled his eyes and held out his arm as a signal for her to come perch on his shoulder, which she did.

"Later," Xander said, throwing deuces over his other shoulder as he made to walk towards his car.

"I'll talk to one or the other of you later as well, I'm sure," Peter said, nodding his regards as he knelt on the ground to unzip Banmon's duffel bag. She had had quite enough of people for now, and was quick to retreat into it. Peter hefted the bag up onto his back, but left it half-unzipped; Banmon waved shyly as they crossed the parking lot over to the old junker that Peter drove here in.

"And then there were two," Natalie said, looking over at Meg. Raumon coughed conspicuously. "Four," she corrected herself.

"It was nice meeting you," Meghan said with a little wave of her hand, "and Raumon, too."

Raumon held out a claw to Oremon to shake. He wasn't expecting much; Oremon had been quite tight-lipped for much of the short time they had spent in each other's company.  
Oremon looked down at Raumon, who was maybe half his height. To both Raumon and Meghan's surprise, Oremon reached down with one hoof and shook the bird's hand.

As Natalie and Raumon departed, Meghan put her hands on her hips and looked at Oremon.

"Look at you, being all sociable," she teased.

Oremon snorted, totally not slightly embarrassed, folding his arms.

 

***

By the time they had returned home, Meghan's mother had gotten back from the store, asking in her typical way where she had been. See, it wasn't like her mother was _radically overbearing_ or anything, but she went low key nuts whenever she didn't know where any of her kids were, despite the fact that now two out of three were adults, legally if nothing else.

Meghan had elected, perhaps understandably, to leave out the part about the digimon, and had just said that she and Oremon had taken a quick trip to the park to get some fresh air.

So it was around eight o clock that evening. James was excitedly explaining some video game to Brendan that Brendan could hardly care less about, and their mother was tending to other business in the kitchen. Meghan was seated downstairs on the couch, laptop on her knees and feet propped up on the coffee table. For her part, she was only barely paying attention to anything, instead idly scrolling through and tabbing between her social media without absorbing much of any of it.

For all Oremon could move relatively stealthy when he wanted to, it was still about as stealthy as a foghorn when he came down the stairs in a hurry, and got all of their attention.

"Something up?" Meg asked, but she looked at him, and could see he was holding the digivice in his hand. More importantly, it was very much lighting up, so she didn't wait for a response before continuting with an, "oh, crap."  
Conveniently, it was at that moment that the lights browned out, and the television and her computer both staticked out for a half a second.

Oh crap, indeed. Meghan set her laptop aside and jumped to her feet; her brothers looked between the television, her, and Oremon with bewildered expressions.  
"What's up?" James asked, peering over at her as she bolted over near the door to put her shoes on again.

"I'll explain later." That was actually courtesy of Oremon, not Meghan, going over to join her.

"You know mom's going to ask _me_ where you are," Brendan said, resting his head on his knuckles.

"Tell her I decided I wanted a cheeseburger more than I need to live?" Meghan suggested halfheartedly, shrugging one shoulder helplessly. "I don't know."

 

***

Ratamon frowned, looking on with vague concern from a safe vantage point on a rooftop as he watched the faint, fiery shape start to flicker down in the middle of the street, shifting and distorting but growing more solid by the moment.

The digimon on the street began to move before it had fully realized, and as it ran, Ratamon could feel the static in the air. It was trying to draw electricity from its surroundings to pull itself through more efficiently-- which, unbeknownst to Ratamon, was causing the electronics in the area to flicker and distort.

It was totally unfair that he had to find them himself, whereas these _antagonistic_ digimon seemed to have either a better idea of where to look, or the best luck in the world.

 

***

It was significantly harder to make sure Oremon stayed out of sight in suburbia instead of the park, but just staying off of the main streets was a huge help.

"You're sure it's not Ratamon again?" Meghan asked, running to keep up with Oremon. They had run halfway across the neighborhood by this point, and had run into thankfully few people.

"Yes," Oremon said simply, stopping to sniff the air and taking a right turn at an intersection. Meghan looked down at her digivice and, indeed, he was heading closer and closer to the little white dot-- and the white dot was heading closer to them, but not moving nearly as fast as Ratamon would have.  
In one day, she had gone from confused about the little device, to meeting Ratamon, to meeting the others, to... well. This.

Oremon, for his part, seemed like... almost like he had finally been validated in something that Meghan couldn't quite place.

"It might help if we knew what we were looking for," Meghan lamented, looking at her digivice and up to the road again. She pressed her thumb down on the white dot approaching them; it brought up the words _Boarmon. Champion level._ , but a fat lot of good that did them.  
However, it turned out that they'd get the answer to the question of what they were looking for as they turned another corner.  
Quite handily, actually.

Heading right towards them, barrelling right down the street like a runaway car, was an enormous pig.  
Okay, a boar, but you get the point.

Its entire head and the mane-like ridge down its spine looked like they were on fire, and most of its its body was vivid orange, save for a black underbelly and face, oddly striped tusks, and a metal plate that glinted in the dying light -- and also, it was the size of an SUV. You know, in case they were going to mistake it for a normal boar.

You know, it might just be the 'Boarmon' that the digivice read out.

Before Meghan could even express confusion or alarm, Oremon rushed forward.

"Iron Head!" Oremon yelled, rearing his head down and holding out his hands like he was preparing to grapple. The space between him and the Boarmon closed rapidly, and the goat straight up smashed his head into the metal plate on the Boarmon's forehead as he grabbed onto the boar's tusks.

"Oremon!" Meg yelped, but to her intense surprise, this didn't result in Oremon being flung, or even knocked backwards. Though the Boarmon didn't stop moving entirely, Oremon smashing headlong into it did seem to have the effect of slowing it down. They skidded to a stop mere meters away from where Meghan stood rooted.

Her relief was not long-lived, though. Boarmon snorted, releasing a cloud of smoke from its nostrils.  
"Running right to me! Make my job easier!" Broken English aside, that was not the most encouraging set of words to hear --- and even less so when it followed up. "Nose Blaster!"

Boarmon snorted loudly and released a plume of flame from its nose-- which, you'll remember, Oremon was practically flush against. The blast of fire threw Oremon backwards, sending him tumbling head over heels across the concrete.

"Shit," Oremon hissed; he was badly singed, but even as Meghan made to run over to him, he was already getting back to his feet-- but struggling at it. "No! Stay back. Don't get hurt."

"You're already hurt!" Meg protested, but she was drowned out by the hostile digimon.

Boarmon was chuckling, a deep and rumbling noise, as it began to close the distance between itself and Oremon. "Too simple," the giant pig said, narrowing its eyes and grinning; it hardly even seemed to notice Meg was there. It reared down and its tusks began to glow, preparing to charge. "Slamming--!"  
At that point, Meghan threw her entire body weight against Boarmon, jamming her elbow into the general vicinity of its ribs, taking care to avoid its fiery mane.

Well, if you've ever tried to dislodge a car with one elbow (and if you have, why?), you can imagine how effective this was at actually derailing Boarmon, but it did distract it. It turned its head to glare at the girl as she stumbled backwards with the recoil, snorted out a cloud of smoke from its nostrils.  
Meghan was realizing she had made a massive mistake when she saw embers begin to form in Boarmon's nostrils-- but Oremon, just as his friend had, saw a chance, and was rushing at Boarmon once more, consequences be damned.

"Iron Head!" Oremon yelled, smashing his horns right into the side of Boarmon's turned cheek.

Boarmon roared in pain and frustration and it stumbled backwards. It tossed its head as it looked between Meghan and Oremon, and again, flames began to flicker to life in its snout.  
Oremon realized a half a second too late that, perhaps fueled by frustration, Boarmon was turning his head towards Meghan as it prepared to call its attack.

And then, that terrible screeching noise echoed off the street, courtesy of the digivice gripped tightly in Meg's hand.

She nearly dropped the darn thing, and it certainly surprised Boarmon out of action. It began to swirl with orange-tinged light as the noise died down, and Oremon smirked as the light began to overtake him as well.

"Oremon, drive evolve to..."

Oremon's body began to grow as he hunched over and grew to match Boarmon in size. His club-like arms slimmed down into forelegs as he became quadrupedal, though his (now hind) legs stayed as fluffy as ever. Red and black markings decorated all four limbs and across the small of his back, and a pair of red marks appeared on his face, following the curve of his cheek bones.

A shaggy red mane erupted from the back of his head and running down his back and between his shoulders; just past where the mane ended, two rib-like bone ridges grew out of his lower back. A skull-like helmet covered the top half of his face; his secondary horns disappeared, but as if to compensate, his primary horns grew enormously. With a snort, he reared back onto his hind legs and slammed his front hooves down into the ground.

"Ibexmon!"

Boarmon, unfortunately, was too aware to stand in awe of the goat's new form. The change had happened quickly, but Ibexmon barely had time to put his new hooves down on the street before flames licked at Boarmon's snout.

"Nose Blaster!" Boarmon cried, blasting a plume of fire out right at Meghan.

Ibexmon was having none of that, and leapt right in the path of the fire. He took the full brunt of the attack, but for all the good it did, it might as well have glanced off him harmlessly. Boarmon sputtered out a couple flustered clouds of smoke; Ibexmon smirked as he reared up onto his hind legs.  
"Terra Spear!" he said, slamming his front hooves down onto the pavement with collossal force. From under his feet, cracks radiated out, towards the pig. Once they reached their target, the cracks spread open wide and from out of the street shot sharpened spires of rock, digging into Boarmon's belly.

Meghan was about to panic about ruining the road, but she looked twice, and though a few cracks were there that definitely weren't there before, most of them vanished as the sharpened rocks retreated into the ground. It was almost as though the ground beneath them was knitting itself back together like a wound.

What a weird metaphor to think of.

(She was beginning to fear there was no way this would go unnoticed by the people who lived on this street, and indeed-- from the safety of their homes, more than one person was peering out the window, staring-- and a couple were taking video.)

Boarmon groaned but righted itself, glaring daggers at Ibexmon. "Making things difficult," it snorted, before it charged at Ibexmon. "Slamming Attack!" it yelled, and judging by its actions and that attack it just called, it was probably going to try a full-body tackle.

Ibexmon met it.

"Headstrong Charge!" Ibexmon yelled, rearing up before charging at the oncoming boar.

His skull-masked face smashed straight into Boarmon's metal plated forehead-- and Boarmon's tusks got caught up in Ibexmon's horns. With a little bit of evident effort, Ibexmon reared his head back, and practically flipped Boarmon like a pancake, sending the big pig tumbling into the air. Not a second later, when he fell back down, instead of smashing into the ground, Ibexmon smashed his head forward one more time.

As the pig skidded down the road, it began to distort and pixellate. Before it even came to a complete stop, it had blown apart into little motes of light and data.

"Ha! Serves it right!" Ibexmon snorted with a wolfish grin.

Meghan ran over to him and placed a hand on his side. "Oremon, with all due respect: what the _hell_?" Her voice was somewhere between incredulous and ecstatic, excited and confused all at once.

Ibexmon smirked and tossed his head. It was then that he slowly began to glow white and orange once more. The light intermingled with the ever-sinking sun, and just like that, Oremon stood on the slightly-more-cracked concrete where Ibexmon had been a moment before.

They wasted no time getting out of sight-- even ducking down a side street felt a little safer than standing out there in the total open. Meghan was practically looking over her shoulder every inch of the way.  
"Shame you couldn't stay all big long enough to give me a ride," she said, sticking her tongue out. Oremon snorted. That was totally a 'i know, right?', she knew.

 

***

Most of the walk home was fairly uneventful. Yes, they had to take some detours, but they avoided people, and the fading light provided a little bit of extra cover.

They were almost home free, when--

"Did I miss it?" Ratamon's familiar voice said from somewhere nearby, right before his white face popped out, upside-down, of the next-door neighbor's tree, where he was hanging by his tail.  
Meghan and Oremon both nearly jumped; Oremon, for a half a second, took a defensive stance, but relaxed shortly thereafter.

"Depends on what you mean by _it_ ," Meghan said, looking at Oremon.

"Another digimon," Oremon said, after a moment of consideration. "If that's what you mean, then yes, you missed it."

Ratamon looked between them. He flipped himself right-side up on the branch and peered down at them. "You fought it off? Any trouble?" Oremon couldn't help but smirk a bit self-satisfiedly, and Ratamon grinned.  
"I'll see you around, I'm sure!" he said, flicking his tail and waving as he took off up the tree, across to a power line, and away into the night.

"God, he's annoying," Oremon said flatly, after a few seconds of silence.

"Iunno, I think he's kinda cute," Meghan said, arms akimbo.

Oremon snorted.  
He waited for Meghan to lead the way up to the house.


	5. Episode 05: Wolf Bite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit late, because I had a busy weekend, but it's still the 16th here, so it still counts.
> 
> There's also a shiny new contest if you want to take a peek at that-- information is on the dA group (DigimonReconnect) or the site (recon.digimonreset.com)! You have nothing to lose and at the very least a free sketch to gain, and a potential plot-relevant OC cameo appearance in a later chapter and cashmoney(tm) if you win. :U So, you know.
> 
> AND AWAAYY WE GO.

"Come on," Natalie huffed in exasperation, her feet beating against the pavement. Raumon was hot on her heels, and her digivice was held tightly in her hand. There were four little dots shining bright on the radar-- two of them, she wasn't worried about.   
The other two, though? The other two were a problem, and were why she was currently running full tilt down an alleyway.

Her peaceful Friday afternoon had been interrupted by a message from Xander plopped all nonchalantly in the group chat right around 4:30.   
_hey. thing went off. two dots on my radar heading towards downtown from NW. following but if anyone wants to beat me to it be my guest_

So, see, she knew: two of those dots were Desmon and Oremon, because Meghan had also jumped in with an _omw_ of her own.

She also knew for sure who they were when, as she was about to emerge from the alleyway into the street, she saw Oremon go skidding backwards down the road.   
Natalie and Raumon practically power-slid into the street, looking in the direction that Oremon had been flung from, right as the goat barrelled right past them and back into the fray. A few meters up the street, Desmon was flapping about fifteen feet off the ground, spitting rings of black static at the identities of the anonymous dots made themselves apparent.

It was two of what looked like the same digimon in different colours -- tall, more or less humanoid, with huge gaping mouths full of sharp teeth, and wild manes of white hair. The only appreciable difference was that one was green and had long, striped horns, while the other was a brownish-red and had tiger-striped shorts but no horns.

The little info window that had popped up on pressing the dots had said _Ogremon - Champion level_ and _Fugamon - Champion level_ , and it was a fair bet that these were said digimon; judging by position, the green one was the Ogremon, and the brown one, Fugamon.

They seemed as interested in fighting each other as they did in Desmon and Oremon. This would be fine (... for a given value of fine? That is, they might not have intervened) if not for the fact that they _also_ seemed to have very little interest in things like 'buildings' and 'property'. A couple windows had been smashed, an awning was in tatters, a couple cars had been dented and pushed up onto the curb, and there were cracks in the concrete and the brick walls of half the buildings on the block.

"Bone Cudgel!" Ogremon yelled as it leapt off of a parked car and swung its massive bone club at Fugamon. It hit true and sent Fugamon flying, where it clipped the corner of a building -- and broke off a little bit of the brick.   
This was, Natalie realized, probably what had hit Oremon right before she showed up.

On that note. "Iron Head!" Oremon yelled, rushing at Ogremon.

"Acro Slicer!" Desmon yelled from her vantage point in the air, slashing down in an arc with one arm. Her claws left a crescent-shaped blade of energy in their wake, aimed right at Ogremon as well. The attack only barely avoided hitting Oremon; if he had moved even the tiniest bit faster, he'd have been hit instead of Ogremon. That said, the big green digimon stumbled backwards a half-step when Desmon's attack hit, and took the full brunt of Oremon's horns right after, knocking it right into the parked car it had just jumped off of.

It was dazed, and the car would get away with a bit of a dent, but that still left Fugamon, who was leaping right for Oremon.

Raumon saw his chance, and leapt out of the mouth of they alley, claws glowing.   
"Symptom Claw!" he cried, slashing out at Fugamon. While he did this, Natalie dashed across the street to where Xander and Meghan were standing, at a safe distance-- that is, far enough away to have some kind of plausible deniability about being involved.

"Hi! Better late than never?" Meghan said as Natalie ran up.

"You almost missed the _party_ ," Xander said in deadpan, looking at the fight ahead of them.

"Oh, yeah, totally, gotta be fashionably late," Natalie said, taking a moment to catch her breath and look around. Some people were looking out the windows of the buildings; a couple people had slammed on the brakes in their cars and were rubbernecking out the window. Dammit. Up to now, they had done a pretty good job of pulling digimon at times and places where it wasn't that big a deal; there had always been some plausible deniability. Meanwhile, if nobody saw this, Natalie would eat her bandana.

In fact, just out of sight in an alleyway on the other side of the fighting digimon, was a young man, watching very intently-- more intently than the people who were hurrying out of the street or gaping in surprise and confusion, at any rate.

 

***

This young man leaned against the wall on one arm, looking between a picture on his phone to the scene happening on the street.

"You think it's the same ones?" a female voice asked from a little ways behind him, from behind a garbage can. The speaker crawled up on top of the trash can she was hiding behind to get a better vantage point.

"Iunno. Doesn't really look like the pictures, don't you think?"

"Hmmm... I think the goat does, just, like, smaller."

"Yeah, I guess," he said, stuffing one hand in his pocket as he thumbed through the pictures he had saved.

He'd stared at those grainy, distorted cell phone pictures for hours over the past few days. He'd been keeping tabs on everything he could find since last week-- actually, since two weeks ago, when this stupid device had shown up, but only since last week did he have any actual _leads_.   
You know. If internet wackos and conspiracy theorists uploading and reposting shitty photos to derelict news aggregator sites and image boards and blogs counted as leads.

Take what you can get.

"Sam," the female voice said, with sudden urgency. "Hey. Sam. Look."

"What?" Sam said, looking up at what was happening on the street.   
Oh. Well, damn. He pocketed his cell phone and grabbed the other device sitting in his pocket, just in case. Truth be told he was _kind_ of hoping this was a dead-end, but... too late now.

 

***

"Shit!" Natalie hissed through grit teeth. All it took for Fugamon and Ogremon to put aside their differences was few claws to the shins, goat heads to the abdomen, and staticky energy blasts, all in the interest of taking care of these nuisances.

"Bone Cudgel!" Ogremon yelled as it leapt, striking Desmon right out of the air with a well-timed bone-club swing.

"Heavy Swing!" Fugamon cried in turn, knocking a charging Oremon aside with its own club.

Raumon, only now recovering from being knocked back himself, was already starting to charge back in-- when in Natalie's hand, her digivice began to glow.

Thankfully, this time it did _not_ see fit to make that horrible screeching noise as Raumon began to glow.

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

The transformation basically happened mid-step, and where one moment was Raumon, Doctorimon was rushing forward with staff in hand. For a moment, he didn't seem to realize that he had changed forms, but he was quick to accomodate for this fact, a phrase here meaning _leapt at Ogremon_.

"Face of Judgment!" Doctorimon yelled, skidding to a stop and turning the angry face of his staff towards Ogremon. Out spilled a stream of black fire, and Ogremon yelped in pain, jumping backwards and on top of a car to get out of the literal line of fire.   
Fugamon, seeing an opening, was rushing to lay a blow on Doctorimon's turned back, when--

"Oremon, drive evolve to... Ibexmon! Headstrong Charge!"

Fugamon caught a side full of angry goat headbutting him. Oremon had rushed right back into the fray, and what do you know? The exact same thing had happened. Meghan's digivice had lit up, much quieter than the first time, and Ibexmon took Oremon's place, and where Oremon's headbutt only would have knocked one back, Fugamon got sent skidding down the road just as it had made the goat go skipping like a rock, just mere minutes before.

Ibexmon snorted as justice was, in his eyes, served.

Ogremon stared dumbly after Fugamon, getting the distinct feeling that it may have gotten in over its head. That feeling only intensified when Desmon, not wanting to be left out, half ran and half flapped her way back in, began to glow.

"Desmon, drive evolve to... Corymon!" she cried, growing in size as she took off of the ground.

Ogremon's eyes flitted between the three digimon it now faced, and it snorted derisively. It swung its club in a menacing fashion, and for good measure, slammed it down on the car it was standing on top of, smashing the driver's-side window.   
"Pummel Whack!" it yelled, throwing a fist out to punch into the air. This released a wave of dark energy, aimed right for Corymon. The big bat-dragon ducked out of the way-- and the wave continued on to take a few inches off the top corner of another building.

"Whoopsies," Corymon said, a bit nervously, casting a look over her shoulder, before turning her attention back to Ogremon. "Black Stinger!" she cried, her tail curling under her, and a series of three black blasts of energy shot from her tailtip.

All three of them hit true -- and Ogremon stopped in its tracks, apparently stunned. Corymon grinned.

It was at this moment that Fugamon was back on its feet and running back--

"Moon Howler!"

Right as Fugamon was passing an alleyway, out shot a beam of swirling, black and green energy. Fugamon yelped, looking around for what hit it.

Luckily, both Fugamon and everyone else present didn't have to wait or wonder, as the culprit bounded out of the alleyway on all fours, growling.   
It was a dog-like creature, about the size of a labrador. It kind of resembled a particularly stocky saluki, mostly white with a grey muzzle and underbelly, with long, fluffy ears and a matching tail. That said, most dogs didn't have green paws and ears, or green markings on their limbs and faces, nor did they wear not only a leather collar, but also bands around their wrists and ankles.

And they certainly didn't shoot laser beams out of their mouths, but that was beside the point, beacuse this one sure was.

" _More?_ " Natalie muttered, looking down at her digivice-- and sure enough, right where the dog was standing was now another little point of light.

"Wasn't on the radar a minute ago," Xander said, squinting.

"Nice puppy," Corymon said sarcastically, from somewhere above; Ibexmon snorted, and Doctorimon shook his head.

The introduction of a new digimon whose hostility was hard to discern was a bit of a spanner in the gears, but the digimon rolled with it.

"Black Bloom!" Doctorimon yelled, procuring a black rose from inside his sleeve; unlike the time back on the roof, this time, he simply threw the rose like a dagger, and it shone bright as it flew towards Fugamon.

"Terra Spear!" Ibexmon reared up and slammed his hooves down into the ground, leaving cracks in the pavement yet again. Spikes of rock shot up out of the ground under Fugamon's feet. This was just enough to tip it over the line, as as the rocks receded, leaving only slightly-buckled pavement in their wake, Fugamon began to glow, before dissipating into pixellated bits of light.

Ogremon, while they were distracted, was beginning to move again.   
"Pummel Whack!" it yelled, punching out in the direction of the strange new dog-like digimon. Once again, a blast of dark energy escaped its fist.

The dog took the full brunt of the attack, tumbling backwards, but it provided the opening Corymon needed, and she swooped in close.   
"Black Stinger!" This time, she struck out with her scorpion-like tail at close range, the tip engulfed in the same black energy as it had shot before.

Bam. Ogremon problem, solved!

...   
Mostly!

You know, aside from the property damage, and the people who saw, and---

That white dog was watching them intently, and watching even more intently as Raumon, Oremon, and Desmon began to glow and return to their rookie forms. She smirked and took off for the alley she had emerged from.

"Hey!" Desmon said, dropping down to ground level, looking around at the other digimon.

"Follow it!" Raumon said, loud enough for the humans to hear. They didn't need telling twice; in fact, Natalie had already started moving. Both trios made a beeline for the alleyway. Not only was following a strange digimon a priority, there was also the issue of getting the hell away from the scene as soon as possible at hand, so, you know-- two birds, one stone.

But see, funny thing: when you try to cram six individuals into the mouth of an alleyway at the same time, and they're coming from roughly two different angles... even if half of them are smaller than normal people, you kind of have a clusterfuck to deal with, and it gets even worse when there's already someone there.

Human and Digimon collided with each other, and nearly jumped a mile when there was a young man sitting on top of a garbage can right around the corner as they turned in to the alley.

He looked to be around their age, with a short-sleeved hoodie over a T-shirt, and a baseball cap on top of messy black hair. He was relatively small in stature, and in his hand he was holding something distinctly cell-phone sized, and distinctly familiar.   
And on the other side of the garbage can, the dog digimon was falling over herself laughing.

"Sounded like fuckin' coconuts colliding!"

"Not wrong, but shut up," the boy said looking sidelong at her. He twirled his digivice in his hand, turned it on, and pushed a button down-- almost like he actually knew what the options meant. The dog digimon began to pixellate in a manner not unlike the digimon they defeated, and with a streak of green light shooting from her right into the green digivice, she was... gone. Just like that.

Natalie and Meghan stared blankly, while Xander voiced what was on their mind:   
" _The fuck?_ "

"... what?" the stranger said, genuinely not understanding why they were looking at him funny. "Have you not found that feature yet?"

"Um... no?" Meghan said slowly. "What?"

Oremon, behind her, was looking between Meg, the stranger, and where the dog had been a moment before. "Where did she go?" he said, fixing his gaze on the boy.

"Don't you think it'd be a good idea to get somewhere a little less... obvious?" Raumon cut in, looking over his shoulder back out at where they had fought Ogremon and Fugamon.

Natalie nodded; the strange boy jumped off the trashcan he was sitting on.

"My name's Sam, by the way," he said, but didn't wait for any other introductions before he took off down the alley.

"Maybe my downstairs neighbor can have a digimon, next," Xander said in deadpan as Desmon alighted on his shoulder. "-- fucking fatass. Warning when you do that, please?"

Natalie and Raumon were first to follow Sam, followed by Meghan; Oremon came a moment later, with Xander bringing up the back.

"So can I assume," Natalie said, half-jogging to close the distance between her and Sam, but he wasn't running particularly fast, "that that dog is your friend?"

Sam didn't touch his digivice at all, nor did he actually say anything (Natalie kind of thought she saw him roll his eyes?) but in a burst of green light, the dog digimon appeared again. Natalie stumbled a bit to the side to accomodate her; she was keeping pace, running alongside Sam on all fours. "My name is Gelermon," she said, looking up at Natalie, "and yes."

"Cool!" Desmon said from her vantage point on Xander's shoulder, grinning. She looked at Xander. "Teach me how to do that. The light show thing."

"Oh!" Meghan said, and one could practically see the lightbulb pop up over her head. "That must be why she didn't show up on our radars!"

They turned around a corner and off to the side was a small, dirt-filled back lot where someone had set up a small garden; this would do. If they listened close, they could hear police sirens not far away.

"Oh no," Meghan mumbled, looking in the direction they had just come from.

"It was just property damage. We're the only ones that got hurt," Oremon said, quietly enough that only she could hear him.

"So nice job back there," Sam said, turning around to face the others; his voice was dripping with sarcasm and he looked like he was going to keep talking, but Xander cut in.

"Hey, hey, hold up. Before you start with the snark, explain yourself. Who are you?"

Natalie might have phrased it a little less bluntly, but she was about to say something similar herself. "And why were you there?"

Sam looked between the other people and their digimon, and shrugged his shoulders, averting his eyes. "Same reason you were there. My D-Rive went off. I followed the radar." He sounded like he wasn't telling the whole truth, but first of all--

"D-Rive?" Natalie repeated, looking from Sam -- still holding the little green device in his hand -- to her own purple one. He had pronounced it like _derive_ , which wasn't a noun, but had mentioned the radar... "Is that what these things are called?"

"Is he the only one who's looked at it for more than thirty seconds?" Gelermon said, rolling her eyes. Sam nudged her with his foot as a nonverbal _shut it_ gesture. She did not. "I mean, between not knowing what it's called, and not knowing how to minimize--"

She was cut off mid-sentence by the fact that once again she was absorbed into Sam's little device. "Don't mind her," he said, though the look on his face said that he at least in part thought she was right.

"How are you doing that?" Meghan asked. It was obviously a pertinent question, for her (and Oremon) maybe more than anyone.

"You really didn't mess with it at all?" Sam looked over at her, then at the other humans, and at their digimon, and shrugged his shoulders. "Start the D-Rive up and hold the center button down for like two seconds. I thought it was obvious."

Natalie looked at the device in her hand. "It wasn't, really," she said, but looked to Raumon. "You mind if I try?" Raumon nodded, and Natalie did just as Sam had said... and it turned out, he was telling the truth. Raumon pixellated like the digimon they had defeated, was engulfed in purple-tinged light, and shot like a beam into her digivice.

And not two seconds later, he re-emerged and re-formed, looking confused and a bit flustered.   
"Okay. That was weird," he said, looking up at Natalie.

"Bad weird?" she asked, kneeling down to be more on his level.

"Not... really?" Raumon tapped his beak and thought of how to explain. "It's kind of like... being there, but not?" He shrugged apologetically. "I'd have to spend a bit longer to tell you for sure." He stretched out, inspecting himself to make sure nothing was out of place, and seemed satisfied. "I kind of got freaked out and wanted out; kinda looks like that's all it takes."

"I was wondering if it was just Gelermon could break out," Sam remarked, stuffing his hands in his pockets as both Meghan and Xander followed suit in minimizing their friends, their digimon absorbed into their D-Rives. "Apparently it's a universal feature."

"Can't contain me!" Desmon chirped while she was still re-forming. Apparently, they could still hear perfectly well while... what had Gelermon called it? Minimized?

"Shit, there goes any hope I ever had of sleeping at night," Xander mumbled in a dry deadpan, and the girls couldn't help but snicker a little bit.

Oremon reappeared in his turn; Meghan was bubbling over with questions to ask him, but Gelermon reappeared next to Sam, too, apparently getting the hint enough to at least discontinue the mocking.

"So, _anyway_ ," she said, getting up onto her hind legs and standing upright so she could put her paws on her hips. "You guys are the same digimon there's pictures of, right?"

"What pictures?" Natalie asked immediately, looking up; she was still kneeling, inspecting Raumon.

"Not you," Sam said, gesturing at Raumon and Natalie, then looking to the other two. "The bat and the goat. Couple of local discussion forums have been blowing up ever since batgirl fought the Kentucky fried chicken," he said, pointing at Desmon, "and Billy the Kid over here taking a stand against pork."

"Oremon," Oremon snapped before anything else (Desmon didn't take issue with her nickname at all), before-- "... people got pictures of that?" There hadn't been any news hubbub about it-- but it _had_ taken place in a residential area...

Sam shrugged one shoulder. "Just a couple conspiracy theory weirdos, mostly, but. Gelermon kept insisting it was Digimon-related so I kept my ear to the ground." Beat. "Turns out she was right."

"As I usually am."

Natalie thought for a moment, looking at this new kid. After a moment, she held up her digivice. "What did you say these things were called again?"

 

***

A round of introductions went around; Sam explained what he knew. It wasn't much. He had the same story as them, that the D-Rive appeared a couple weeks ago; he had been keeping up with local news aggregates and gossip apps, and he showed them the pictures he had. They were of bad quality, and distorted slightly, like the files had become corrupt in rendering them. There were only a couple. The ones of Corymon were about the same quality as the ones that had been on the news; the ones of Ibexmon were only marginally better.

When asked how he had figured out the little device as much as he had, he had shrugged and said only _I spent a little time messing with it_. This was an understatement, but that was beside the point, and he didn't share that fact.

(In truth, he had spent at least a couple days trying to get every piece of information out of it. He had practically pulled it apart to no avail. He tried plugging it into a computer; that had dumped an encrypted file, which itself opened up a whole other set of questions. He had even done a cursory internet search or two, as a total last-ditch effort when his attempts to puzzle it out on his own proved fruitless... but if they hadn't even figured out how to minimize their digimon, then... eh. He figured they wouldn't understand anyway.)

For their part, the others explained what they knew; that there was a fourth (a fifth, now?) person they had found, Peter. Meghan asked Sam if he'd encountered Ratamon; his bewildered expression spoke volumes.

They parted ways before long; Natalie, Xander, and especially Meghan were relieved to know they could get around with their digimon without risking exposure, and they tried out this new _travel mode_. Natalie was sure to ask for Sam's contact information before she left, and then she was off, leaving Sam and Gelermon alone in the parking lot.

Sam stuffed his hands into his pockets and adjusted his baseball cap.   
"What you think?" he said, looking at Gelermon.

She came back with another question as opposed to a real answer. "Does this mean we have to start working with them?"

Sam shrugged one shoulder. He _really_ hoped it didn't, but he had a feeling what he wanted had very little to do with what was going to happen.

"... well, I for one hope not," Gelermon continued, folding her arms. She paused before looking up at him. "Wanna go home?"

He let loose a huff of breath and half-laughter, his shoulders falling with the release of tension he hadn't realized he had been carrying. "You have no fucking idea."

 

***

It wasn't quite right to say that Sam lived alone; he lived with his father, but for all intents and purposes, that meant he lived alone as often as not. Not to imply that his father was deliberately absent or neglectful; he just worked as a trucker, meaning he spent weeks at a time away from home on a regular basis. It was just as well; they only had one parking spot out front of their crammed little townhouse, anyway.

So the fact that Sam walked into a house that was dark in the middle of the day -- from both drawn blinds and all the lights off -- was no surprise.

As soon as he was in the door, Gelermon reappeared out of his D-Rive with a flash of light and data, having -- of course -- hidden, even for the short walk up from the parking spot. She was already appreciating the fact that she could get out and about a bit more easily now. Not that she _minded_ staying inside by any means, but ever since she had grown into Gelermon last year, she had been feeling a little bit cooped up.

Still. Sam had the monopoly on feeling cooped up, far as Gelermon was concerned. Maybe the whole _going out and beating up giant monsters_ would be good for him, she thought. It was certainly a better incentive than most.

"When's your dad get back?" she asked, stretching out her paws as she stooped over onto all fours as she followed Sam up the stairs.

"Uhh, fucked if I know. Next week? It's, what, the 25th?"

"Something like that."

"Then yeah, he's back on the first, eye-eye-are-see." Yes, he just spelled out _iirc_.

Gelermon stuck her tongue out. "Boo."

"You just hate having to stay in my room," Sam remarked as they reached the first landing. Again, don't take this the wrong way-- his father and Gelermon had a perfectly acceptable, amicable relationship; it was just that the former was allergic to dogs, and the latter's being a digimon and not a normal dog didn't seem to make a difference.

"Well, I mean, that's not even going to be a problem now, is it?" she said, starting up the second flight of stairs. "What with digimon showing up. Wrecking shit. I'll get all the exercise I can _handle_." She grinned.

" _Joybunnies_ ," Sam drawled and rolled his eyes, taking the stairs two at a time to beat Gelermon to the top. He pushed open his bedroom door and waited for her.

" _And,_ " Gelermon continued, standing up on her hind legs once she was on the top landing, "you saw those other digimon. The ones with the humans, I mean. They're sloppy." She thought back to not just how they had almost hit each other with their attacks in the process of fighting the two ogres, and also to how they had collided like rubes in turning in to the alley. "We're going to have to pick up the slack if any more digimon show up."

 

***

"... eyewitnesses disagree on the exact series of events," read off the newscaster, "but regardless, several thousand dollars worth of property damage is estimated to have occurred as a result of the incident. Investigations are underway by the Atlas Park Police Department..."

Sam paused the video playback, sitting back in his computer chair and resuming the consumption of his half-eaten dinner of microwave pizza. "The conspiracy wackjobs are probably having a field day with this already," he said, looking over to where Gelermon was flipping through an old comic book, lounging on his bed.   
It was around half-past eleven o clock by now. Normal people might have considered this a bit late to be eating dinner, but when your sleep schedule could be politely described as _totally fucked_... well, time loses all sense of meaning, you know?

"Sounds like the general populace is already getting in on the gig," Gelermon said, not looking up. "Just watch. There'll be weird furry porn by the end of the month."

" _Christ_ , there's a mental image I never asked for," Sam said, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Gelermon grinned.

"I mean, it's got the transformation, and the big monsters, we're like sitting on the holy grail--"

Sam raised his voice as he cut her off. "Here, toss the D-Rive over. I wanna look at it again."

Gelermon snorted and continued grinning. "It hasn't grown any new limbs, you know, it's going to be the same as it was last time you looked at it." Regardless, she picked it up from where it lay on Sam's bedside table, among a veritable pile of disassembled old electornics, and threw it underhand over to him.   
He caught it with both hands and turned it over to look at it from all angles.

He cast a look at his computer. Natalie had added him to their little group chat, but luckily, it seemed pretty low-activity; the one Sam hadn't met, Peter, reacted with mild surprise at there being a new person in the group, but seemed pretty hard to faze. It had gone quiet since then.   
Sam was thinking of it now, not because anyone had said anything new but... well. for as much as he'd postured, this thing was only slightly less a mystery to him than it had been to any of them. It had shown up for him two weeks ago out of nowhere, and in fact he had almost overlooked it. Only the fact that Gelermon was drawn to it made him give it a second glance, as Gelermon usually kept her nose out of his electronics.

There had been no doubt that it was related to digimon, or at least to Gelermon (seeing as how it was able to minimize her), but watching it at work -- and watching the digimon change forms temporarily as a result of the D-Rive at work -- made a whole fat lot of nothing make any more sense.

Suddenly, without his hitting any of the buttons, the D-Rive lit up, and Sam nearly fumbled with it in his surprise.

Gelermon's ears involuntarily perked up in a moment that made her seem very much like a normal, non-Digimon dog. "Something up?"

Sam frowned as he looked at the D-Rive, and a few button presses later brought up the radar. Right at the very, very edges, one dot came into view-- followed, mere seconds later, by a second.   
This had happened earlier today, too-- but these two were pretty much on a direct course in their direction, coming from dead north and moving south.

"Shit, not again."

Gelermon, meanwhile, cottoned on immediately, without needing to see what Sam saw, or even have it explained to her. "Let's go!" Gelermon said, clenching her fists and practically springing to her feet.

"You realize I could be saying, shit, not again, we're out of corn chips."

"Yeah, but you're not."

Sam groaned and put his pizza aside again, standing up. He paused, before firing off a message into the group chat.   
_so are we using this to tell each other when something shows up?_   
Beat.   
_anyway there's shit on my radar, northside heading towards the river looks like. but none of you are probably awake so w/e wish me luck_

He grabbed his phone, pocketed his D-Rive, and looked over at Gelermon-- but she was already waiting outside of his room, at the top of the stairs.   
As they were about to head out the back door, he swiped his thumb to the dots on the map, bringing up both names at once.

_Garurumon - Champion level_

_Ratamon - In-Training Level_

... hadn't one of them said something about a _Ratamon_? Like, in a positive sense? Because, you know, by the look of this, every turn the Ratamon dot took, the Garurumon dot followed, almost like Ratamon was being chased.   
Dammit, now he _had_ to. ... ... aside from Gelermon practically beside herself ready to go and he was pretty sure she'd explode if they didn't.

... not that he was hoping that they wouldn't have to, but... you know?

Shut up.

 

***

Ratamon frowned, looking over his shoulder as he stopped in a tree. There existed the faint -- just a faint!-- possibility that he had made a mistake. He'd gotten a bit too close, that was all.

"Howling Blaster!"

He squeaked in a terribly dignified manner (read: not at all) and jumped out of the way, the stream of blue fire hitting the branch and snapping it off instead of hitting _him_ and snapping _him_ off.

Okay, he had made a few mistakes. He could fix this!   
... he realized, only belatedly, that he only knew where one of the humans actually _lived_.

...

...

He could fix this!

 

***

Sam had surmised that on the track they were on, the dots would intersect with a street a few blocks over, still in the general residential neighborhood-- they'd have plenty of time to cut them off, so there was no real point in driving for that, right? Right.   
The problems that arose were that, A, the dots were still moving; and B, the dots started moving at an angle, moving more streets away, and by the time he noticed, it would have cost him more time to go back.

"I!" Huff. "Hate!" Huff. "Running!"

Sure, it was only, like, fifteen minutes, but still. That was fifteen minutes of a brisk jog he hadn't been prepared to make, with the bonus vague fear of someone trying to jump him because who went jogging at midnight?

Gelermon took the liberty of rematerializing herself out of minimization as Sam nearly doubled over on the sidewalk, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. She lowered herself into a quadrupedal stance, just in case anyone looked, so as to minimize suspicion.   
"I'm exempt from running for the rest of my life after this." Pause to catch his breath. "This is what I get for skipping PE."   
Gelermon sniffed at the air, her ears perking up again.

Turns out, she might not have needed to, because the street lamps flickered for a second, all as one.

Sam looked up and around -- which direction was _north_ was kind of a crapshoot, he had always sucked at directions, so he looked up and down the street.   
Well, looking to the left yielded nothing, and looking to the right he could see a large shape coming their way, so, you know, bets on the right here. Sam (correctly) assumed that the big one was Garurumon, but Ratamon was proving hard to spot in the dark.

That was not a problem for long.

"Howling Blaster!"

A beam of blue flame shot from the big, approaching shape, right at a street lamp on the far side of the street. It certainly stopped flickering-- the actual _light_ part practically exploded, and a little white shape leapt from where it had apparently been sitting down to the street and resumed running on all fours with its massive tail held high, like a squirrel-- and then looked straight at Sam and Gelermon, as if just noticing them.

The approaching digimon were only about a block away, now, and it was much easier for Sam to make out details. Garurumon, it turned out, was a big-ass wolf, silver and blue, with weird furry feather-like protrusions on its head and back and a long ribbon-like tail.   
Okay. Noted.

By the time he was able to take stock of this, a few things happened.

Ratamon suddenly darted to the side of the road that Sam and Gelermon were standing on; Garurumon turned its attention to them, and skidded to a stop, the feather-like protrusions around its face twitching. Ratamon darted behind the boy and the dog. Gelermon got up onto her hind legs, taking a defensive stance.

Sam got the intense feeling that he was being used as a meat shield.

" _You,_ " Garurumon growled, eyes narrowing, its voice deep but with a feminine timbre.

Sam couldn't help himself. He looked in both directions around him, before saying with profound sarcasm, "me?"

"Not you!" Garurumon snapped, and focused on Gelermon. "Look at that, _rat,_ you accidentally led me right to one."

"What?" Sam said, craning his neck to look at Ratamon; he looked apologetic and mouthed _accidentally_ , and Sam was prepared to ask a number of questions of the little white monster.

Gelermon, however, did not have nearly so many questions. "Moon Howler!" she yelled, firing a green and black beam of energy out of her mouth right into Garurumon's face. Sam, of course, turned back to see it take the brunt of the attack right to the face.

"You're making it mad," Sam muttered, not a warning, not even worried, just a flat, deadpan observation.

"Howling Blaster!" Garurumon yelled, firing a beam of its own right back -- right at where Sam, Gelermon, and Ratamon were standing. Ratamon leapt away handily; Sam practically tripped over himself to get away from it, while Gelermon actually jumped forward, towards Garurumon, narrowing her eyes.

"You've got a problem with me, you try to blow _my_ head off, not Sam's! Void Paw!" Gelermon cried, running right into close range with Garurumon's face. Her handpaws ignited with the same energy she had shot at Garurumon a moment before, and she began to strike out in quick jabs and punches.

Garurumon growled low, flinching back from the assault, but even as it did, icy energy began to well up in its mouth. "Alright! Subzero Ice Fang!" it yelled, and despite that mouthful of an attack name, it instead snapped out and grabbed Gelermon in its jaws. Its teeth began to freeze, sharpened ice digging into Gelermon's body. The smaller dog snarled, trying to escape, but it only made her problem worse.

"Hey!" Sam yelled, just about lunging forward, when--

You know, he hadn't been expecting the loud noise, because it sure hadn't happened when those other peoples' digimon had changed forms. His D-Rive screeched and quieted down as it began to glow, green mixed in with white light. Gelermon began to glow as well and Garurumon dropped her like she was burning hot. Gelermon landed on the ground and righted herself as the light overtook her.

 

"Gelermon, drive evolve to..."

She began to grow in size, and rose up onto her growing-more-powerful hind legs. Her wristbands and anklets disappeared as the dark and light parts of her body inverted, the bulk of her fur turning jet-black, and her paws and underside turning white, though the green circles on her body and the markings on her face remained vivid green. Her ears changed from long and floppy to cropped and alert, black outside and green inside, as her face became more lupine. Her tail followed suit, becoming black with a white tip and underside.

Bandages wrapped around her wrists, and from under the bandages, licking up her arms to the elbows, dark emerald-green flames roared to life. Her collar grew large, pointed spikes in place of its studs, as a black, spiked wristband settled onto her right wrist. For a finishing touch, a crest of three green-tipped "feathers" emerged from each of her shoulderblades, not unlike Garurumon's. She howled before slamming one flaming paw into the ground.

"Frekimon!"

 

Sam stumbled to a stop; he surely didn't need to intervene now. Frekimon smirked.

"Well, would'ya look at that," she said, flexing her claws and admiring her own new form for just a second. As she flexed them, the fire began to lick further down her hands, and she cried: "Ravenous Hunter!"   
Her paws fully ignited in the dark-green flames, and she leapt onto Garurumon, slashing out with her claw before digging them in to grab a hold of it; she was still somewhat smaller than Garurumon, and Garurumon roared and began writhing to throw her off. She held fast for a few moments, but she lost her grip and skidded backwards.

The very second that Frekimon was off its back, Garurumon turned its sights to Sam. It was him, after all, holding the thing that had made Frekimon evolve, right? So...

"Subzero Ice Fang!" it cried, lunging for Sam with icy energy crackling in its jaws once more.

" _Fuck_!" Sam yelled, which we can all agree is a perfectly understandable reaction to having a giant wolf leap at you.

Speaking of giant wolves leaping at things, Garurumon was knocked off course mid-leap by Frekimon.

" _Bitch_!" she snarled, lunged and moved with surprising speed to smash into Garurumon's side, then feinted away, leaving Garurumon to go careening into a bush, whose owner was definitely going to have to call... whoever it was you called about bush concerns, Sam couldn't say he knew off the top of his head.

Garurumon was righting itself and growling, its pupils restricted-- as was Frekimon.

"Howling--!" Garurumon began, opening its mouth to gather up some blue fire, but Frekimon cut it off.

"New Moon Fire!" she yelled, rearing back. Within a second, she spat out a black-and-green fireball, which she shot right at Garurumon's face-- and into its open mouth, where it was gathering energy for its own Howling Blaster.   
Needless to say, Garurumon did not get its attack off without a hitch-- in fact, it did quite the opposite, and began to shift and pixellate before exploding into little bits of data.

Ratamon, who had relocated in this time back to behind Sam, practically had big sparkly hearts in his eyes.

Frekimon was still glaring at the spot where Garurumon stood a moment before, breathing heavily, when Sam apprehensively approached her. "Hey. You, uh, you okay there?" he said, looking up at her face.

She didn't immediately respond, growling faintly, still glaring straight ahead. She paused, her ears twitched, and she looked down at Sam. Her eyes were bright, practically glowing, such that he could actually see her pupils dilate back to normal.   
"Never better," she said, slightly sarcastic, but after a moment, she smirked.

"You can digivolve!" Ratamon piped up-- he hadn't actually been _present_ for any of the fights thus far. Frekimon snapped her attention to him, her pupils constricting again before she remembered who she was looking at, and relaxed.   
As she relaxed, she began to glow, and in a swirl of light, she was back to being Gelermon.

She pointed one blunt claw at Ratamon. "You. Are you Ratamon?" Ratamon, in fact _being_ Ratamon, nodded enthusiastically.

"Why was Garurumon chasing you?" Sam said, looking down uncertainly at the little white monster.

Ratamon looked between Gelermon and Sam, and scratched his cheek. "Kind of a long story," he said.

Gelermon retorted without missing a beat. "We've got time."

"It's midnight and we're standing on a residential street, we really don't..." Sam muttered, but his complaint went un-commented on, because at that moment, a human shape came around the corner. Gelermon fell to all fours and Ratamon leapt for the now-wrecked bush.

"I take it I'm late?"

It was Natalie, sounding a little out of breath. Sam apprently couldn't hide the surprise on his face. Ratamon poked his head out of the bush.

"Yep," Sam said simply, putting his hands in his pockets and trying not to look like he was still winded from running here. His eyes drifted to the side as the girl approached.

"You missed it," Gelermon said, tossing her head pridefully. "What with my champion form being by far the coolest."

With a flash of purple light, Raumon appeared next to Natalie. "Well, we're all entitled to our wrong opinions," he said with a shrug; Gelermon glared for a moment, then, after a moment, couldn't help but snicker. Raumon beamed.

"Hi!" Ratamon chirped.

Natalie blinked. "Oh, hey," she said in greeting, then looked at Sam. "You met Ratamon?"

"He led a giant wolf that tried to kill me to us. So let's say yes." Sam looked at Ratamon again, and folded his arms.

"Well, it was an accident!" Ratamon said, splaying out his little clawed hands defensively. "It was trying to eat me, and I was just trying to find where the goat lives!"

"Lucky it ran into you," Raumon said thoughtfully, earning him a strange look from Sam and Gelermon, and he puffed up his feathers as he hurried to explain himself. "Well-- Meghan and Oremon live kind of a ways away from here, right?"

"I think she said she lives over in the western quadrant," Natalie said, scratching her head in thought; this was a ways northeast.

"Right! So, you know, it might have caused more damage on the way," Raumon explained, looking at the destroyed bush, the claw marks in the road, and the destroyed street lamp the next block over.

"Well, your cities are hard to navigate," Ratamon said in his own defense.

Sam took off his baseball cap so he could run his hand through his hair, looking up in exasperation at the sky. "Still not what I'd call _lucky_." He paused, looking back down at Natalie. "Wait, how did you get here? Do you live nearby or something?"

Natalie shook her head. "Raumon and I were down at the park," she said, gesturing in the vague direction of the city park. "I got your message in the group chat and we thought we might be able to help. We crossed the river and the radar went off."

"We didn't need it, obviously," Gelermon said, but Sam blinked. He honestly hadn't been expecting that answer-- he hadn't been expecting anyone to actually _come_ , but life was just full of surprises, wasn't it?   
(Of course, sometimes those surprises take the form of giant wolves trying to eat you, but, you know!)

"Don't you, you know," Sam gestured vaguely with his hand here, "have a real life. Like, a job or something?" Beat. "School or something, maybe?" He honestly had no idea what the college schedule looked like. "You know. Like a normal person."   
...   
That was a normal person thing, right?

Natalie blinked, but shook her head. "Summer break, and..." she coughed. "I've been kind of distracted on the summer job front. With all the digimon stuff."

"Whatever. Not like I have room to judge you."

None of them were paying attention to Ratamon, who was sniffing at the air. He moved quickly enough that by the time Gelermon noticed that he was scurrying away and up a power line, it was too late.

"Hey!" she barked (ha). "Get back here!"

Ratamon looked over his shoulder and waved before taking off.

"Dammit," Sam muttered, replacing his hat.

"He'll show up again, probably," Natalie said, shrugging. They might have continued their conversation, but the window of a house nearby lit up-- the inhabitant was probably about to come out and demand to know what was going on. In a hurry, both Sam and Natalie minimized their digimon into their D-Rives, and Natalie began walking. Sure, it was a weird time to be taking a leisurely stroll, but...

"You drove here?" Sam said, following Natalie.

"Yeah," she said with a nod. "My car's on the next block over, at the gas station."

There was a brief pause.   
"Can you give me a ride home? I'm not _about_ this running thing and didn't exactly expect to come this far."

Natalie perked up. "Sure!"


	6. Episode 06: What a Wicked Band We Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing special to add this time!  
> The contest is still going on, and you should totally do an entry for it if you like having at least one piece of free art guaranteed and standing a chance at winning cashmoneys and more art.
> 
> Also I'm tryyyyying something new. I think you'll notice it immediately.  
> (The evo screenshots went over well, so I'll keep doing those, too, when they're appropriate.)
> 
> (Fingerguns.)

The bell on the café door jingled its gentle alarm that the door was being opened, but good luck hearing it. Some days the Lotus was a goddamn ghost town; this was not one of those days. Almost every table was occupied. A small group of twenty-somethings stood around waiting for their drinks, while an older man in line was expressing frustration that he wasn't being prioritized immediately despite four customers being ahead of him.

Natalie mostly tuned the complaining out as she slid into line behind this man. She knew her order ahead of time, and she was in no particular rush. She had just been out running some errands and having lunch with some friends, and after parting ways with them, she had decided to take a gamble on the Lotus-- both the gamble of it taking a while, and also the vague wonder if Peter would be on shift when she popped in. Not much had happened on the Digimon front in the past week, so interactions had been pretty minimal.   
Assuming that none of the other members of the loosely-connected group _People With Digimon and D-Rives_ (name pending) weren't hitting it off on their own time. Call her crazy, but Natalie kind of assumed they weren't. (She was right.)

She understood why this was, of course-- they were all still pretty much strangers, their digimon being one of the only things to unify them, but she couldn't get digimon off her mind.

In the days after the incident with Ogremon and Fugamon (and to a lesser extent, Garurumon), they had agreed to lay as low as possible; police were looking for culprits for the incident, and the people who owned the building were looking for someone to sue for damages. Because it was hard to sue a green monster that had exploded into pixels, that wasn't going so well, but... well. It opened up a lot of questions.

As the line moved forward a bit, she craned her neck around the line to see if she couldn't catch a glimpse of who was working.

Bustling around behind the counter, the black-aproned baristas were moving to and fro in the cramped space there, doling out muffins, preparing drinks, and praying for the sweet release of death. It took a second for her to recognize Peter sending out drinks-- without the douchey scarf (well, come on, it _was_ douchey) on, she almost moved her glance right past him.

It took a while to get up to the front of the line, but by the time she reached the front, there was only one person behind Natalie; the crowd sitting around hadn't thinned much, but there were at least fewer people coming in, and by the time she went to the side to wait for her drink, you could almost hear yourself think!

"Medium iced mocha for Nata--" Peter stopped mid-name, noticing that Natalie was already standing at the bar, raising a hand in greeting. "Hey. This yours?"

 

"Having fun?" Natalie said as she took her drink, irony positively dripping in her voice. Peter fixed her with a look that could only accurately be described as _dead_. Passed on. Ceased to be. Bereft of life. Remarkably parrot-esque. Pining for the fjords?

"I was supposed to get off my shift," he checked his phone surreptitiously, "forty-five minutes ago. Look into my eyes and ask me that question again."

Natalie gave him a sympathetic one-shouldered shrug and her best sorry-for-your-loss grimace, but not ten seconds later, courtesy of an older woman who Nat assumed was Peter's manager:   
"Hey, replacement's here and the crowd's died down. You can clock out, Peter."

"'Ight," Peter said over his shoulder, then looked back at Natalie. "Hey. Hold on a second."

Natalie blinked a couple times but didn't have anywhere better to be, so she stood around awkwardly while Peter disappeared into the back. He re-emerged a few minutes later sans the black apron, running a hand backwards through his hair and adjusting his glasses.

"You wanted something?" Natalie said, and Peter nodded, but kept his lips tight, in a _we'll talk about this when there aren't people around_ way. If it wasn't already obvious it was Digimon matters -- because what else would he want to talk to her about? -- that sealed it.

As they emerged out of the building, blinking in the sunlight, Peter spoke again. "I'm gonna assume nothing's happened for you?"

"Nope," Natalie said, taking a sip of her coffee and shielding her eyes with her other hand. "Do you have Banmon with you?" she asked; Peter shook his head.

"Banmon doesn't want to try coming to work with me to work just yet."   
Natalie supposed that made sense. Raumon had explained, after a bit more experience, that being minimized was kind of like floating next to her, able to more or less hear everything going on around him, but unable to interact with anyone. From what little she knew of Banmon, Natalie could guess that the little ghost wouldn't be eager to be around in a bunch of people and loud noises, even if they couldn't see her.   
"I left her at home with the D-Rive. She can get my roommate to call me if anything happens."

Natalie hummed in acknowledgement of his words, dipping her hand into her pocket and pulling out her D-Rive to look at it. She began to walk back to where she had parked her car; Peter followed.   
"Why do you ask? Do you have Raumon with you?" he asked.

"Oh-- no," she said, shaking her head. Raumon had been more interested in the idea of coming out and about, but had declined to come along today, himself, but she still found herself carrying the little gadget around everywhere she went, with bird or without. "I was just curious. I was thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep them close at hand in case something happened."

"Do you expect something to?" Peter asked, looking over at her.

Natalie couldn't quite tell if he was being condescending or not, because -- as she was quickly learning -- he spoke primarily in a deadpan. "I don't know, honestly," she-- fittingly enough -- answered honestly. "Not that I'd be able to do much without Raumon around, but... you know. I don't think it'd be a total fluke."

"Not with the way some of them talk, no," he agreed. The Digimon who had really spent much time talking seemed to have an agenda of some sort, and it was reasonable to assume that the pattern would continue.

"Especially," Natalie added, "considering that the digimon we know seem to recognize each other." Raumon hadn't been able to shake it, and had told her so-- all of the digimon who had been partnered with humans that they had met so far set off his deja vu something horrible, and each of the digimon had said the same to their respective humans.

"Right." For someone who apparently wanted to talk, he was certainly laconic. "Don't you think it's weird?"

"What? The monsters coming through from nowhere?" Natalie couldn't stop herself, making a _pbbbt_ sound by expelling air from her cheeks. "No, that's just a normal Tuesday for me. The weird part is that it's happening on other days too, now." Peter actually cracked a bit of a smile. "Really, though, yeah."

Peter nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. "It's been on my mind a lot lately."

"I guess it does kind of come off as the kind of thing some people would call _fate_ or something," Natalie said, gesturing idly with one hand.

He hummed. "Would you?"

"Me?" She blinked, kind of taken aback by the question -- she had only kind of meant it as an offhand comment. She shrugged one shoulder. "I-- I mean, I don't really believe in that kind of thing." Beat. "Why, do you?"

Peter looked like he was considering his words carefully before he answered. "To a degree. I don't exactly expect any lion heads to come out of the clouds and tell me to follow my destiny, but." He shrugged. "It just strikes me as odd that we've all run into each other so easily." Beat. "Relatively speaking." He stopped as they came to an intersection. "I live over this way. Unless you want to follow me home, I think we part ways here."

"Oh-- I'm glad we were going the right way," Natalie said, a bit sheepish to admit she had begun walking without doing such trivial things as confirming with Peter, but at least it worked out. "... you weren't kidding when you said you lived in the uni district, damn."

As they parted ways, Natalie couldn't help but feel a little bit lost.   
What a strange guy.

 

***

"I think that might just be the way he is," Raumon said when Natalie described the slightly odd conversation she had had with Peter, and had complained about his... indirect methods of communication.

"Yeah, but it's still frustrating," Natalie said. She was laying on her back on her bed, looking at her phone with one arm propped under her head. "Iunno. It's not like I'm expecting everyone to be best buddies or anything, but if there's something connecting all of us... I'd kind of like to know what they think about it, you know?"

"I know," Raumon said, a bit wryly. He looked over at Natalie from his seat -- sitting in Natalie's computer chair.

Natalie sighed and spread out eagle on her bed. "I don't know. Maybe I'm just antsy." She paused. "Do you think I'm being too pushy?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean..." Natalie paused, trying to find the words. "What if all of this just _is_ a coincidence and I'm making a big deal out of nothing? Rallying the troops for--"

Raumon cut her off, sounding incredulous. "Are you really trying to say that being attacked by monsters is a big coincidence that we shouldn't think twice about?"

She paused. "... okay, you put it that way and it does sound pretty stupid."

"It sure does. No offense."

"None taken," Natalie said, handwaving it away. "I don't know, though. I just don't want to come across as... like... the over-enthusiastic boss telling his team they need to synergize and bring up sales percentages by 12% by next quarter."

"I think they're all probably just a bit apprehensive about all of this," Raumon said, then he paused to stroke his chin. He spoke slowly, thinking through what he was saying. "I mean, Peter said he thinks there's more to this than just coincidence. They're just playing their cards closer to their chest to wait and see, or something." Beat. "Or they might be asocial weirdos, heck if I know."

Natalie smiled. It was always good to have a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, or tell her when she was worrying too much-- and Raumon excelled at that role.

Raumon beamed back, and continued talking. "Point is, aside from maybe Meghan, I don't think any of them are jumping to associate with each other. If this _is_ something bigger than coincidence---"

"Which, let's be real."

"Right! Trying to get everyone to come together might not be the worst idea." He paused. "I'd actually like another chance to talk to some of the other digimon, myself." He thought back; pretty much every chance he might have had to talk to the others had either been interrupted or at an inopportune location.

"Do you want to try meeting up with them again or something?" she asked, sitting halfway up and propping her head up on her knuckles. "Or, actually try meeting up with them, since we haven't all been in the same place yet." Who knows-- maybe this time another goat would fall out of the sky.   
She hoped one didn't-- she was kind of tired of going over introductions.

"That _was_ what I was getting at, yes," Raumon said; his shit-eating grin couldn't fit on his face, and bled over into his voice.

Natalie groaned overdramatically and flopped backwards. "First Peter is roundabout and indirect. Now you. What's next? Will I be the next one to succumb to The Vagueness?"

"Only time will tell."

She rolled over to look at Raumon. "I'm going to throw you out a window."

"Please don't, I don't have wings."

 

***

_hey-- when are people free in the next few days? raumon wants to meet up. thought we could give it another go with less falling out of trees this time._

That message, courtesy of Natalie -- obviously -- popped up in the group chat later that evening. She sat with her phone, waiting for a response; it didn't happen immediately. It was about fifteen minutes later when Sam popped in a reply:   
_what the hell did i miss_

_The last time we tried to meet up, it ended... oddly,_ came courtesy of Peter a little while later.   
Well, 'oddly' was a word for it. It wasn't _bad_ , per se, but... yeah. It seemed to open the floodgates, though-- the ice had been broken, or maybe just the repeated new-message alerts were getting attention.

_oremon and i are free pretty much any time after about two most days !! :D_ Meghan was the first to respond with actual useful information. _and also, he got really put out at the falling out of trees thing_

From Peter: _Should be free on Saturday. Let me check the schedule._

_im free whenever literally all the time i guess,_ Sam said. _i dont do mornings tho_

_im off day after tomorrow too, but i got shit with my band until whenever,_ came from Xander, _so ten to one says ill be late_

_you have a band? :o_ from Meghan.

_yeah and we're shit_

... ... it took a while to get a plan sorted out.

 

***

Saturday afternoon came around. June had just begun, and there were just enough clouds lingering in the sky to keep it from getting too horribly hot, or worse, humid. This was a real concern, living in a city on the river. Even if they were a ways away from the river, they were going to be gathering out at a mostly-abandoned picnic area, and thus, were outside-- mugginess was quite realistically the worst thing that could happen.

Yes-- we're counting monster attacks in that.

Humidity is the worst.

The picnic area in question was a bit out of the way, in a mostly-abandoned park, quite unlike the large main city park. It was barely more than a ramshackle old playground and a thicket of overgrown trees -- nestled in which were the picnic areas -- but that was just fine for their purposes.

Natalie couldn't deny that she was feeling a bit... well. Anxious wasn't the word. Her talk with Raumon, the one that had led to this meeting in the first place, had set her at ease, but she couldn't help feeling a bit unsure.

As she took the final turn on the path into the picnic area, she was met with a pleasant surprise. Meghan and Peter were already there, though by the looks of it (and by the fact that she saw the light fade as Oremon materialized out of his D-Rive), she wasn't terribly behind.

"Hi!" Meghan said as she noticed Natalie's arrival, waving; Oremon glanced over, and that was as much acknowledgement as they were going to get. Peter looked over from his seat at the old picnic table, and nodded his acknowledgement.

"Hey!" Natalie said; she would raise a hand to wave, but her hands were occupied by the assortment of plastic bags she was carrying that were by no means a light load.

Raumon materialized of his own accord next to her. "We brought food!" he said helpfully, gesturing at Natalie with one claw. There was a beat of silence, and then it struck him to actually take one of the bags from her to help carry it over to the table. As he set down the bag, he looked around inquisitively. "Is Banmon here?" he ventured, not seeing her. This was, of course, because she was not present to be seen.   
There was a certain reluctance to the way she materialized with a surge of white light, or at least apprehension and lifted one clothy hand in greeting.

"You're really going the extra mile, aren't you?" Meghan said, peering at the bounty of food that Nat had brought.

Natalie smiled, shrugging. "I figured it might ease tensions a bit. Food solves everything, you know?"

"Have either of you heard from the others yet?" Peter asked as Banmon drifted closer to him. Natalie checked her phone; there was a big fat lack of new messages, which was a _no_ to answer Peter's question. When she looked up, Meghan was shaking her head.

"What a communicative bunch," Meghan said, putting one hand on her hip.

"Might be driving," Peter said, taking a peek inside the bag that Raumon had set down, right as Natalie set the others down as well.

Banmon popped up over his shoulder. "You certainly brought a lot..." she said. Most of the food was the kind of food you pick up from the store when you realize belatedly you have to feed --

"Ten people," Natalie said, holding up both hands with all her fingers splayed out to indicate ten individuals. Beat. "Or, I guess, five people and up to five digimon, depending." She realized only as she was talking that while Raumon ate regularly, it wasn't _required_ for the digimon. They certainly did seem to enjoy eating, though, so she was going to accomodate them, dammit!   
She had brought an armful of prewrapped sandwiches --enough to have extra -- and tubs of side dishes from the supermarket deli, a couple bags of chips, a small assortment of two-liter bottled drinks, and plastic cups for said drinks. Not a lot, admittedly, and pretty basic fare, but-- look, there is no easier way to lure young adults than with free food.

While they laid the food out on the table, they heard the sound of approaching foot steps coming up the path through the trees. For a moment, they were apprehensive -- the _vague_ fear that it was a Normal Person was hard to shake -- but when Gelermon came around the bend, padding along on all fours, they relaxed.

"Sup, bitches?"   
Sam was a few seconds after her, looking somewhere between amused and apologetic for Gelermon's announcement of her own arrival, but his lips were pressed tight as he raised a hand in greeting. Peter moved his battered old messenger bag off of the table bench and onto the ground to free up sitting space.

Well, that was four out of five (eight out of ten, really) at least. Conversation was pretty limited (read: not happening), so Raumon opened up the floodgates on eating by being the first one to unwrap one of the sandwiches, and that was at least enough to break the ice on that front-- nobody had wanted to be the first one to reach for food.   
Gelermon grabbed one sandwich with each hand and passed one to Sam; Peter grabbed two as well, but he unwrapped and picked all of the meat off of one, before handing the now-vegetarian sandwich to Banmon. Oremon feigned disinterest, taking a seat at the rickety old table, but surreptitiously grabbed a sandwich once Meghan asked if he wanted one.

Sure, the conversation wasn't lively, as everyone had varying amounts of food in their mouths, but it did seem to at least kind of break the ice.

Just as promised, Xander showed up late, though not too much so-- only about ten minutes after Sam's arrival. Still in the middle of eating, they heard a frenetic flapping noise and turned to look, just in time to see Desmon emerge over the top of the trees, surveying their little clearing from up above.

"So much for subtlety," Sam remarked, in what seemed like the most words he had said at one time since arriving. He was, accordingly, speaking sidelong to Gelermon, who snickered.

"I heard that," Desmon said, grinning as she landed smack on the table, almost squishing a bag of chips, grinning all the while.

Xander didn't appear, coming around the bend in the path, until after the bat digimon had already invited herself to the bag of chips she had almost landed on.   
"Hey," he said, waving half-assedly. Peter nodded once his vague acknowledgement of Xander's existence, Meghan waved, and Sam was more concerned with his drink than on the people around him.

"Heyo," Natalie said, gesturing over her shoulder. "Food's free for the taking whenever you feel like it, or if you don't, your prerogative."

"Glad to hear it," Desmon said, already in the process of shoving a handful of chips into her mouth as she hopped down onto the ground. Xander rolled his eyes at her and took a seat at the corner of the table.

Conversation struck up slowly with everyone there. Peter and Xander were conspicuously not talking to each other. Sam looked to Natalie and Meghan, and tilted his head at the two other young men with a _what'd I miss?_ expression. Natalie, picking up on it, explained in hushed tones how their previous attempt to meet up had gone.

"So they're probably tying to peace-keep by, you know, totally ignoring each other?" Meghan provided, gesturing with one hand.

"Honestly, I'll take it over the alternative," Natalie said with a shrug of one shoulder and a sip of her drink. "I'm counting it as a success if nobody punches anyone."

"I... see..." Sam said slowly, looking between them. "Goats falling out of trees and fights. This is what I get for being late to the party, isn't it?"

"Yep," Meghan said, smiling in a way that was sort of amused, sort of apologetic.

Peter cut into the conversation with Sam, here. "Speaking of. Outside of messengers, we haven't formally met."

Small talk was definitely a step in the right direction; they began to chat, explaining the basics about themselves to those that had missed it. Names, occupations or lack thereof, shoe size, deepest darkest secrets-- you know, the normal introductions.   
(Okay, maybe not the shoe sizes and the secrets.)

Banmon, as well as the rest of the digimon, was seated a little ways away from the table where the humans sat, near the fallen-into-disrepair barbecue pit. She cast a look over to where the humans were making their small talk. "Whew... I was worried they might start another fight."

"Fighting's a lot more of a pain than the alternative," Gelermon said, shrugging one shoulder. "Not worth the effort most'a the time unless someone really needs an ass-whooping."

"Group harmony through apathy?" Raumon said wryly, tapping his beak thoughtfully.

"Hmph."

"See? Beardy's already got the hang of it," Desmon said. Oremon looked at her with an unimpressed expression and snorted, and she grinned right back.

"Is any of us going to cut to the point and address the elephant in the room?" Oremon said, deciding to ignore Desmon. When all eyes were on him, he folded his arms. "We've met each other before."

"That's a big claim, innit?" Gelermon said, lounging back and leaning on her hands.

"You feel it too, though, don't you?" Raumon prompted.

"What? Just because I know I've seen a Raumon doesn't mean I've seen _you_ ," the dog said. "Just because I knew what I was fighting was a Garurumon doesn't mean I had Sunday brunch with it."

Raumon scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, I guess."

"But... it feels different," Banmon said, quiet. "I think it does, anyway..."

"What _I_ think," Desmon said, "is that we were all dropped here by an alien conspiracy, and all of this is a big government cover up. Brainwashing!"

"You're sounding like the internet wackjobs," Gelermon said, disdain in her voice and in the curl of her lip.

"It's jokes," Desmon said, sticking her tongue out. "We've all been there the same amount of time, though, right? More or less?"

"Fifteen years, give or take," Raumon said, nodding; the others nodded their agreement with that timeframe. "And this certainly hasn't happened since then. If we all came through at the same time, wouldn't it make sense that we have something in common?"

"Yeah," Gelermon said with a roll of her eyes, "the fact that we all came through fifteen years ago." She was obviously not on board with this.

"For someone who just said fighting was more effort than its worth," Desmon said, looking at Gelermon, "you're certainly being contrary."

"I think Raumon's right," Banmon said, but Desmon didn't stop talking, and so kind of drowned the ghost out.

" _I_ think birdy boy has a point," Desmon said, shrugging. "Fifteen years, and our buddies got the D-Rive thingies, _and_ we're all getting mad deja vu from each other, _and_ none of us remembers anything before coming here?"

Back at the picnic table with the humans, the conversation had actually turned in to a related channel, quite by coincidence.

"I actually met him," Meghan was saying, "hiding under the slide at the playground. He was lost and confused and really grumpy -- I mean, he still is really grumpy, but he almost tried to headbutt me. I think he thought I was gonna try to kick him like a soccer ball or something."

"Sounds about right," Natalie said, nodding. "I mean, I met Raumon under the bridge at the city park, and he seemed on pretty much the same page." Beat. "I mean, I think he'd also been attacked by a bunch of dogs at the dog park, so that might not have helped." She hummed, looking over at Xander, who looked like he had something to say.

He, of course, did.

"You're here saying you met them out in places you might actually expect things to show up. Desmon just fuckin' showed up in my parents' attic and refused to go away. I mean, in mini form, but still, I'm figuring you didn't find a full grown goat under the fuckin' slide, either."

Meghan nodded. "Well, yeah. He was like, a little goat puff."

All five of them compared notes, so to speak. Peter said that Banmon (then called Wispmon) had accidentally drifted through his wall and had collapsed into a little ball of fabric when he had noticed her; Sam's story was that Gelermon, formerly Shuckmon, had caused a massive racket by knocking over their garbage cans at two in the morning, but they all had a similar basic framework-- a little digimon, lost and varying levels of confused and afraid, who had appeared fifteen years ago.

The small talk had given way to discussing their digimon, and the digimon had been a bridging point to actual conversation. Though it was still a bit awkward, and still mostly about digimon-related matters, a good portion of the tension began to slip away. Sure, Sam and Peter were both relatively quiet, but in different ways. Peter spoke up often, but was generally laconic and was more of a listener; Sam didn't voice his opinion as much, but had more to say -- usually sarcastic-- when he did. Xander and Meghan were able to keep the conversation going at varying levels of abrasiveness, filling in the silence.   
(Xander and Peter weren't _completely_ ignoring each other, but they didn't really... respond to each other a lot. This was probably for the better.)

Natalie, for her part, felt a great sense of relief. This was actually kind of working. ... she didn't mean to sound _too_ surprised, but-- seriously. Look around at the people she was trying to get along. Them being amicable was a sign of sucess, darn it.   
She cast a look over to where the Digimon were discussing, and pricked up her ears.

"I think it's obvious, then," Raumon was saying, "that we most likely came through together, and got separated."

"Hmph. I _guess_ that makes sense, kind of," Gelermon said.

"If you have any better ideas," Oremon said, crossly, "go ahead and share them."

"I just wonder," Banmon said with her usual level of confidence (that is: lacking), "why it was we came through together?"

 

***

Ratamon flittered his wings to slow his descent as he leapt from one rooftop to the next, and he paused where he landed, looking at the sky. Things had been quiet for the past few days; that was understandable. Even _he_ had a hard time finding cracks stable enough to pass through sometimes, it must be even more of a pain for less-compact digimon.

Maybe one of these days he'd end up stuck on one side or the other for longer than he anticipated.

...

... he'd cross that bridge if he ever got to it.

He had gotten a better idea of where the humans and their digimon lived, at least in the broad strokes-- it'd be easier to find them if he needed to alert one of them to any fishy digimon business. That was good!

But that still didn't solve his biggest problem.

That _biggest problem_... well, they were certainly laying low, weren't they?   
Hmph.

Ratamon paused his internal lamentations, looking to the sky and shielding his eyes with one blunt hand. He had to squint, but he could see against the drifting clouds and the blue sky, the faintest bit of distortion.

It's the damndest thing. Sometimes, your biggest problem wasn't your most immediate one.

 

***

"... so every time anyone came looking into my room, she'd hide in my laundry basket," Peter said. He was in the middle of explaining that, from their meeting until he had moved out, he had managed to keep Banmon almost entirely a secret from his mother as far as he knew.

Banmon had returned to his side, while the other digimon were taking advantage of the opportunity to spend some time outside. Desmon was doing laps around the clearing (with Xander yelling at her periodically to stay below the top of the trees) while Gelermon, after a bit of prodding, was chasing after her on the ground; it was one half for fun and exercise, and half because Desmon was having fun coming up with new nicknames for her, most of which she did not appreciate. Raumon was gathering up flowers and leaves to press later, and Oremon was sitting on a rock. Said goat trying resolutely to ignore everyone else except for Raumon, with whom he seemed to have an unspoken understanding of some kind.

"See, that's harder when they're not ghosts," Natalie said, sticking her tongue out. "Every time my sisters have someone come over, Raumon has to hole up in my room, and it's not like I could have anyone come over. It kills your social life, doesn't it?"

" _Tell me about it_ ," Meghan said, looking over at Oremon.

"You can just avoid all of that by not having a social life to kill in the first place," Sam said. He was looking down at his phone instead of over at them, but this was -- they were finding out -- not terribly out of character for him.

"Honestly, though," Natalie said, by way of agreement. She rested her chin on one hand, looking over at the digimon to see if they were getting on as passably as they were.   
(Seriously, though, she was counting this as a rousing success.)

"Aw, come on, puppypants," Desmon chirped, grinning down at Gelermon as she turned around and began to fly backwards, apparently just to prove that she could.

"Get down here!" Gelermon barked. "Moon Howler!" She opened her mouth and fired a swirling black and green beam. Desmon ducked to avoid it and it instead snapped a thin tree branch just behind where the bat had been moments before.

"Will the both of you _knock it off_!?" Oremon snapped, finally hitting his breaking point. Snorting, he got to his feet and glared.

 

"Someone's in a bad mood," Desmon said.

"You've been running in circles for the past fifteen minutes," Oremon grumbled, folding his arms.

Gelermon snorted. "Why's it any problem of yours, billy goat gruff?"

"It's--"

"Hey, guys?" Banmon said surprisingly loudly, which meant 'what anyone else would consider a normal speaking volume'. This was enough to get the other digimon's attention, and the humans' as well.

See, she was over near Peter-- which meant that she noticed the little light going off in Peter's bag sitting on the ground.   
Peter reached into his bag, as all of the others reached for where they had stored their own D-Rives. Sure enough, each of them had lit up, and when they brought the radar up...

"Kabuterimon, champion level?" Natalie read off, furrowing her brow. It was hard to tell whether it was a relief or not that the dot was heading right towards them.   
Bets on it not being a good thing.

It was less of a relief that two dots flickered in beside it -- or maybe they had been overlapping it?

"Both of them are 'tentomon, rookie level'," Meghan provided, being the first to flick her thumb over them.

"That's not bad, then," Sam said, stroking his chin. After all, their friends were rookies, so...   
(Yep, thank the fact that he actually read the damn D-Rive's information for that one. And for his next parlor trick, he'd do a simple web search! ... no, but really, the others had intuited that much, Sam was just the only one who actually knew it factually.)

"We gonna throw down?" Desmon asked, perking up her ears as though she could locate them by sound alone. She landed on the ground, regardless.

"Hopefully not," Raumon said.

At the exact same second, Gelermon gave her own contrary input.   
"Hopefully."

The dots were moving in quickly-- faster than any other digimon who had shown up on their radars thus far, barring maybe Ratamon. The fear that these were not friendly digimon was growing more and more pronounced by the moment.   
A hush fell over the group; they waited with bated breath. Desmon, to nobody's surprise, heard it first, but it wasn't long before they all heard it. _It_ was a loud buzzing, as loud as a passing truck, and like a hundred-thousand really pissed-off bees were flying their way in unison.

And then:

"Electro Shocker!"

The tips of the trees got fried clean off as a massive ball of electricity arced right down into their clearing, and just as succinctly fried away any hopes they may have had about not having to fight. Convenient!   
But more on the subject of the crackling ball of electricity headed their way. The humans scrambled to get the fuck out of the way, or at least further out of the way; the digimon, more directly in the line of fire, dove in whatever direction was most convenient. Imagine, if you will, someone at a house party smashing a forty on the ground and screaming _scatter_ , and you have a fairly good idea of what this looked like. The electricity hit the ground and left a nasty black mark in the dirt, but nobody got hit.

Ten pairs of eyes were on the sky to look for the culprit, and they found it pretty quickly.

It's pretty hard to miss a huge blue rhinoceros beetle with four arms, four wings, and a conspicuous lack of eyes, and even if that were a thing that could happen, the two smaller-but-still-enormous ladybugs flanking it almost gave off the impression of heralds. All they needed was trumpets. They all three came to a stop upon seeing the gathering down below.

"Super Shocker!" yelled two voices -- presumably these were Tentomon-- in unison, shooting crackling beams of lightning out from under their wings.   
Unconventional heraldry!   
They both crackled down with even worse aim than their bigger buddy, which meant that they, too, crackled harmlessly into the dirt, but it sent a message loud and clear. These big bugs were on the offensive, so there was no reason to wait for a declaration of purpose.

"Moon Howler!" Gelermon yelled, firing the black and green beam from her mouth yet again.

"Black Static!" Desmon cried, hopping into the air as she shot fuzzy black rings of energy from her own mouth.

"Earth Wrecker" from Oremon, and he slammed his hooves into the ground. Like toast out of a toaster, a pair of jagged baseball-sized rocks downright popped out of the ground. He caught both of them in the air, one for each hand, and lobbed one at each Tentomon.

They were followed into the air by a slightly apprehensive, "Shadow Shot!" from Banmon, one shadowy blob after another.

Raumon, uniquely, hung back-- though more because of lack of decent long-range options than anything so noble as waiting for an explanation, but he didn't miss out much. The attacks sailed through the air, one after another, but did jack and all good, as Kabuterimon and the Tentomon dropped out of the air, and out of the line of fire quite handily, landing with a cloud of dirt and dust.

Kabuterimon flexed its many, many claws (remember: four arms) and despite his apparent lack of eyes, looked around, surveying the smattering of digimon -- standing, or in one's case flying, ready -- and humans -- who were in various states of 'getting out of the way'. Both of the Tentomon hit the ground a few seconds after the bigger bug did, and they looked around a bit more skittishly.

"God, I fucking hate bugs," Xander muttered. Natalie shot him a _now may not be the time_ look. It seemed that Kabuterimon agreed that now may not be the best time for that comment, because it turned its head to look towards him.

"Stay out of the way," it said, pointing at him with its two left hands. "This is between us and _them_."

This actually worked out, though-- distracted by telling Xander to shut up, that left a beautiful opening.

"Dark Ring!" Raumon cried, holding his hands out. Underneath Kabuterimon's feet, a dark purple spell circle began to flicker into existence.

All of these next few things happened near-simultaneously.

First, the left Tentomon began to crackle with electricity as it lifted up its wings, preparing to cut Raumon off, but--   
"Void Paw!"   
Gelermon rushed in, her hands swirling with energy, and she delivered a nice hard power-backed punch right to the Tentomon's face, sending both her and the bug tumbling head-over-heels.

Secondly, not wanting to give the Tentomon on the right an opening to retaliate, Desmon yelled:   
"Acro Slicer!" With a slash of her claws, a crescent-shaped blade of energy flew right into the other Tentomon, who was too busy turning its head to look at its compatriot to step out of the way.

Thirdly, and finally, the spell circle underneath Kabuterimon's feet flickered to life, black energy beginning to surge out of it, and it roared as though it were standing on hot coals, lifting back up into the air with a buzz of its wings.

Kabuterimon did not seem amused, and with a growl, it folded its arms around itself as it began to spark with electricity. "Electro Shocker!" it yelled, releasing the energy it was building up as another crackling orb of lightning. It arced right for Raumon, and Oremon near him; they both dove in opposite directions, and it sailed right past them.

This time, the damage was significantly more substantial than a bit of singed dirt-- the tree the Electro Shocker had hit looked like it had gotten hit by a truck driven by an angry redneck who wasn't going to let a tree stop him from flooring the gas.   
In less eloquent terms, it was practically splintering in half; if not for the fact that the impact site was blackened and charred, it would look more like it had been hit by a cannonball than an electric shock.

Now imagine how pretty that would be if it had been bird or goat! Their human partners sure were.

"Oremon!" cried Meghan, clenching her fists and furrowing her brow.

"Be careful!" Natalie yelled, looking around quickly to survey what was going on on the whole.

Gelermon was still tangling with the Tentomon she had tackled; the one that Desmon had attacked had its sights set on her and was following her into the air, beginning to crackle with electricity. Both of these pairs were trading attacks, their voices aiding to make the entire scene more chaotic.   
All the while, Kabuterimon was beginning to gather up more electricity in its arms, looking between Raumon and Oremon like it couldn't decide which to go for first.

"Electro Shocker--!"

"Breathtaker!" Banmon cried, closing her eyes tight and throwing her hands out. They stretched and glowed white as they wrapped around Kabuterimon's face; at the exact moment that it released its electricity, she yanked its head backwards.

"Iron Head!" Oremon yelled, rearing his head down and running in to the pulled-back Kabuterimon. His head and more important horns met the big bug's thorax with surprising force. Banmon let go of Kabuterimon, her arms returning to their normal size as she did.

As Kabuterimon stumbled backwards, Raumon leapt in as Oremon leapt back. "Symptom Claw!" the bird yelled, his claws glowing purple as he slashed out at Kabuterimon's belly.

It was kind of surprising to the humans, off to the sidelines. The digimon were-- well, they weren't exactly working as a stellar example of teamwork, but even compared to the way they had fought with Fugamon and Ogremon (Banmon excluded), it was clear they had some kind of understanding of each other on an unspoken level.

The Tentomon bugging (ha) Desmon decided to forgo the formalities and simply rush her, tackling her out of the air. She squeaked with surprise as the bug made its approach, her claws lighting up. "Acro Slicer!" she yelled, not slashing through the air but simply striking out with her claws as the Tentomon connected with her and they both fell out of the air. Her tentomon practically flew right into her claws, and with a flash of light, began to pixellate.

"Moon Howler!" Gelermon yelled as the Tentomon giving her trouble pinned her down, opening her mouth wide to fire the beam. It connected with the Tentomon point-blank in the chest, and it, too, began to distort and pixellate in a sure sign of defeat.

Both dog and bat had to take a moment to reorient themselves (and in Desmon's case, flap back up to height) to turn to Kabuterimon, and only barely seemed to register the raptly-attentive humans congratulating them from the sidelines. The bigger bug was the bigger problem.   
Well, there was just one way they solved problems round these parts-- at least, when 'problem' meant 'giant monster trying to kill you'.

"Iron Head!"

"Void Paw!"

"Shadow Shot!"

"Black Static!"

"Symptom Claw!"

Desmon and Banmon's attacks flew past the digimon moving in for a melee strike, and struck the big blue beetle first, while Raumon, Oremon, and Gelermon each delivered their blow in close quarters. See, maybe individually none of their attacks would have been a big deal; but one after another, they certainly gave Kabuterimon pause.

After a second to consider, it snarled, huddled in on itself, and began to spark.

"Electric Storm!"

Instead of firing off the electricity in an orb, the orb surrounded Kabuterimon; the three who had rushed into attack had to leap backwards lest they get shocked. Kabuterimon dug its claws down into the dirt as the electricity dissipated, having done its job.   
It cast a look around itself, at the five digimon all perfectly willing to get a piece of it, and made a snap decision. Its wings buzzed to life, it kicked off the ground, and Kabuterimon was making to flee.

Banmon squeaked in surprise, looking around in a panic for about a half a second, before she threw her arms out. "Breathtaker!" For the second time, she was able to apprehend the giant beetle. Kabuterimon, however, had a bit of an advantage in the force division-- the little ghost struggled not to be dragged along as Kabuterimon, hindered, tried to pull away.

Banmon squeaked and focused all of her strength into pulling back. With a massive effort, she gave an almighty pull and dragged Kabuterimon straight out of the air and back to the ground.

"Electric Storm!" Kabuterimon yelled again, surging electricity all around itself, and Banmon let go with only fractions of seconds between her and a nice solid electrocution.

Fearing that Kabuterimon might try to escape again, the other digimon were quick to hurl out attacks.

"Black Static!"

"Earth Wrecker!"

"Moon Howler!"

Desmon's staticky black rings, Oremon's jagged rocks, and Gelermon's beam of energy all collided with Kabuterimon at almost the same time, and it roared with pain and frustration-- but it still wasn't making enough headway to take care of their problem, and if they didn't, the big beetle would either keep attacking or get away, and... well. Forgive them for assuming that it might be a bad idea to let a very angry giant electricity-slinging beetle do as it pleases.

"It's not enough!" Natalie called, cupping one hand around her mouth, looking to Raumon-- but as she did, the little crow began to swirl with purple light, as did the D-Rive in her other hand.

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

He wasn't even done shifting into his more powerful form before he was diving forward. The other four digimon gave him ample passage as he closed in on Kabuterimon.

Kabuterimon, in response began gathering electricity. It was clearly preparing to electrocute Doctorimon if he got too close, but he saw what was happening ahead of time.

"Black Bloom!" Doctorimon yelled, suddenly feinting and leaping backwards. As he leapt, he procured a black rose from within his sleeve, and then threw it like a dart. The petals glowed with an eery purple light as it struck Kabuterimon right in the chest, and with a snarl and a roar, Kabuterimon began to shift and pixellate.   
The light that burst out of it shot to all five of their digivices, creating five thin streams that surged through the air for a half a moment.

There was a moment or two of silence.

"Well," Natalie said, "that certainly is a thing that just happened."

"Are we going to get to look forward to this happening all the time?" Meghan said, rubbing the back of her head.

Sam was the first to respond. "Just knowing my luck? Probably."

"It _does_ seem to be becoming a pattern," Peter said, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

"Oh no," Banmon mumbled, looking around at the damage they had caused to the picnic area. "I'm not... a huge fan of this."

"Suit yourself," Gelermon said, grinning around at the exact same damage. "I'm glad to finally see some excitement."

"Same!" Desmon said, beaming with an almost manic glint in her eye.

"The last thing you need," Oremon said, glancing sidelong at her, "is more excitement." That said, he did look pretty self-satisfied, so he clearly wasn't complaining too much.

"Is everyone alright?" Doctorimon asked, casting a cursory glance around-- but only at the other digimon. He only seemed satisfied once everyone nodded or at least grunted their assent. He stretched out, and he began to glow. It was only a moment before he returned to being Raumon. He paused for a moment, and looked around. "Are there any more of the sandwiches left? I think I deserve another sandwich."

The digimon were all a lot hungrier than they were before the bugs had shown up, so the last of the food was quickly distributed and handily decimated.

"Sorry about all this," Natalie said to the other humans, sighing. "I have to admit this isn't what I had in mind when I wanted everyone to get together."

Peter shrugged one shoulder. "Worse things have happened."

"Better than if they had cornered any of us alone, right?" Meghan piped up. "Or started wrecking things in the rest of the city."

 

***

Ratamon peered over the treetops, taking care to stay out of sight at the gathering of the humans and their digimon. Okay! Kabuterimon was gone-- they had taken care of it, it looked like. Threat managed.

They were getting better at this! He was _almost_ starting to worry a bit less.   
... almost.

That still left his bigger problems to attend to.

Where the heck were they, anyway?


	7. Episode 07: Word on the Wing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot to say here-- just me being surprised we're now seven chapters in and I still haven't missed an update! GO ME.

"People are going bonkers over these monster sighting things."

That's a fine welcome-home. Peter had barely walked in the door when his roommate met him with that comment. "And how is the stock market doing?" he said in utter deadpan, sarcasm apparent despite the lack of inflection in his voice.

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," Ian said, shrugging one shoulder. He didn't look away from his computer for even a moment. "I figured you might be interested in the affair of monsters, you know, your best friend is one." Beat, wherein he looked up. "But enough about me, I mean you're also friends with Banmon, so."

"You're hilarious." Peter did not think he was hilarious. He flopped down onto the couch to start pulling his shoes off. "What happened? Another digimon sighting or something?" He had kind of given the cliffnotes to Ian as to what was going on, but he felt he was kind of justified in keeping the details on a need-to-know basis.

"Nah, not as far as I know. It was just on the news again. I think someone at the station is preoccupied or something. Someone claiming they saw a giant blue beetle the other day, I think? They were just doing another _blah blah if you have any information_ blah blah shtick."

"Right," Peter said, running a hand backwards through his hair as he exhaled.

"You have _any_ idea why all this shit is going down all of a sudden?"

Were it possible for Peter to have less of an idea than he had a couple weeks ago, that was as much idea as he had now. Not only were more digimon coming through with the same cryptic motivations, but now there were _more digimon_ that made up their merry little band, and moreover, those digimon all agreed that they knew each other, but didn't know why.

"Not the damndest," Peter said. That was that, and he changed the subject. "You're not working tonight, right?" Ian shook his head, and allowed Peter to continue. "You down to run up to the used record store later?"

"The one up northside?"

"Yeah."

"That sounds like some hipster-ass bullshit."

Beat. "So that's a yes?"

"Yuh."

"I'm gonna go get out of these clothes what reek of coffee beans and desperation," Peter said in unnecessarily flowery tones, tugging on his work shirt with a displeased expression. "And check on Banmon. Bellow if you need anything." Ian grunted his acknowledgement, and Peter retreated to his room to do just this.

"You here?" he asked as he closed the door behind him, looking around for any sign of the little ghost. When she didn't respond immediately, he shrugged to himself and figured she might have been asleep. It wasn't until after he had already changed out of his work clothes and into something a bit less soul-crushing that she made her grand reappearance.

'Grand reappearance' meant she drifted in silently while Peter's attention was on his laptop; he saw her out of the corner of his eye and nodded a greeting. "Where were you hiding?"

"Oh," Banmon said, "um." Peter leaned back in his chair to look over at her, waiting patiently. "I actually, um." She raised a hand to rub the back of her head nervously. "I went outside for a little while actually?"

There as a moment where Peter paused, as though waiting for a punchline. "Really?"

Banmon practically wrung her hands in her nervousness. "There's the tree right near the window, and I've been, you know, feeling kind of." She gestured vaguely. "Ever since the thing. With the Kabuterimon, I mean. So I kind of... sat out in it for a while?"

Well. Colour Peter surprised. Not that he had any _problem_ with this, as long as nobody spotted her and nothing happened to her. Still, in all the years he had known her, Peter was fairly certain he could count on his fingers the times she had gone outside alone for any significant length of time, _maybe_ his toes if his definition of 'significant length of time' was really loose.

"You feel any better after?"

"Not really," Banmon said after a moment of hesitation.

"No?"

There was a beat, before "... there's a really aggressive bird who lives on the far side of the tree. That kind of put a damper on things."

The corner of Peter's mouth curled into a small smile, and he swivelled his chair around to face her. Though Banmon's mouth wasn't visible, the fact that she was smiling was evident from the expressiveness of her eyes.

"I don't know," she said after a moment. "I think I just want to be... you know. Ready, if another digimon shows up."

"I thought you weren't exactly thrilled about the fighting, though," Peter said, leaning back and folding his arms. Even though he was asking what he felt were fairly obvious questions, he already followed what she meant. He just had to ask questions, because, you know, he was diffcult like that.

"I'm not," Banmon said, and she kind of slumped as she thought of how to phrase what she meant. "But I... I don't want things to go badly if it happens. I don't want anyone to get hurt, I guess?"

Peter nodded, and considered the little ghost before him. "You think you might want to try coming out in my D-Rive a bit more?"

"Like... when you're working?" Banmon said, shaking her head. "Oh, god, no." The fact that she was using that forceful of language (grading on a scale, here) was a testament to the intensity of her _do not want_.

"I wouldn't wish that on anyone," Peter said, looking and sounding well and truly dead inside, before he continued in a less hollow tone. "We're going to run up northside to the record store a bit later, things like that. Might do you some good to get out some more, without fear of hostile birds."

"Very funny," Banmon said, shaking her head. "I guess. Maybe? I don't know."

"You don't have to make the decision right now," Peter said, shrugging one shoulder. "Offer's just open."

 

***

"If you keep throwing that thing, I'm going to catch it, and if I catch it, there's a non-zero chance it's going to get eaten," Gelermon said, her eyes fixed on the old stress ball that Sam was currently throwing at the ceiling.

 

Sam, for his part, was laying on his bed with one earbud in, a podcast that he wasn't paying attention to running on his phone to provide the background noise. "What?" he said a half-a-second too late to sound natural, turning to look at Gelermon and getting beaned in the face by the stress ball. "Ow." It was more of a kneejerk reaction to getting hit in the face, not that it actually _hurt_.

"What's up," Gelermon said, not really a question, as she hopped up onto the foot of Sam's bed, "and if you say something like 'gas prices' I am going to punch you in the dick, so help me god."

Sam couldn't help but snort, and cracked a lopsided smile despite himself. "What? Nothing's up."

"Yeah, that's the _point_ ," she said, dramatically flopping backwards. "I'm _bored_."

"And here I was thinking we'd had enough excitement with the giant bugs," Sam said, propping himself up with, and leaning backwards on, his elbows. "And, you know, the whole human interaction thing. Enough of that for the next century, thanks."

Gelermon snorted. "Right?" she said, grinning. She paused, and her expression -- though not her tone -- softened just a tiny bit, but Sam knew her well enough to notice it clear as day. "I thought you were doing pretty good about it, though. Even if they're all annoying as tar."

"Oh, not with the face," Sam groaned, rolling his eyes and letting himself fall back down on the bed.

Gelermon did, mercifully, not harp on the subject. "We ever gonna tell your parental unit about all the digimon shit?"

Sam thought for a moment and pulled a face, even though he was still staring at the ceiling. "I'm gonna call that something he doesn't need to know about."   
His dad had been home for about a week, and would be off again in another few days. This entire time, Sam had magnificently managed to skirt around the issue of digimon-- he had already had to deal with enough well-meaning surprise when he had explained that he had to go out and meet up with some.   
Well. He didn't call them _friends_ so much as _people_ , but the point was this was still surprising.

Gosh, was it that surprising that he was interacting with people? ... yes, but shut up.

Point is, it had already been a bit of a shock-- he didn't need to make it worse.

Gelermon smirked. "Ah, lying to your parent. A proud tradition."

"It's not lying, it's just leaving out details. Mark the difference."

Sam chuckled, and still laying down, reached over to the bedside table where he had thrown his baseball cap. It was old and worn -- he had had it since his freshman year of high school, and it was hardly the only thing he still had laying around. The clutter in the corners of his room was testament enough to that, but hey, it wasn't _clutter_ , it was _coziness_.   
(Less charitably, a fire hazard, but either way.)

He cast a look to the window, only bare traces of afternoon sun getting through the blackout curtains, and his gaze drifted from the window to the bedside table. His hat had been covering his D-Rive, and of course, this led to a thought.

"You wanna go out and get something to eat?" he proposed, looking over at Gelermon. "I mean, you'd have to minimize, but." Even though she had literally just been complaining about being bored, she blinked, incredulity on her face.

"Are you sick? Dying, maybe? Pod person?"

"You literally _just_ said you were bored," Sam said, sitting up and tucking his hat onto his head.

"Yeah, but I say that all the time. I thought you knew me well enough to know that meant _let's go downstairs and play Street Fighter, meet me in the virtual pit and I'll kick your pasty ass_ or something."

"So you're saying you're gonna pass on getting food?"

Beat. "Nope."

Sam smiled and picked up his D-Rive.

One trip downstairs later, Sam bid a quick _hey we're getting food we'll be back in a bit do you want anything_ all in one breath to his father, who was more-than-half-asleep on the living room couch anyway. When he got no response, he cast a second comment about _I'll try not to die but no promises_ over his shoulder as he beckoned for Gelermon to follow him through the kitchen and out the back door.

"I wonder if you could try to pass me off as a normal dog," she said as she fell onto all fours and followed Sam out; since they opened up into the back alley, she wasn't too worried about being seen just yet. "That way I wouldn't have to get minimized."

"You're green, wear bracelets, and talk."

"Just like a normal dog, you know," she said, cheeky and smirking.

 

***

Turns out that Banmon had, with a bit of deliberation, decided to come along with Peter in his D-Rive, after all.

See, being minimized was... kind of odd. She was still _there_ , next to Peter, but kind of not. She knew she was floating next to Peter, and could still hear everything that was going on around her, but she felt kind of pleasantly numb, and moving seemed like more effort than it was worth. In a way, it made her think of the idea that Peter had once proposed, of planes of existence layered over each other-- she hadn't really understood it, but it's what came to mind.

Regardless, she had to repeatedly remind herself that nobody could see her as she listened to the idle chatter of Peter and Ian rifling through milk crates of used vinyls in this hipster-tastic used record store.

"Hey, look. _Hospice_ on vinyl," Peter said, pulling a nearly-new record out as he flipped through the dust sleeves.

"I'm vetoing. You're not buying that."

"What? Why?"

"Because if you buy it, you're going to want to listen to it, and if you listen to it, I have to listen to it, and if I have to listen to it, I'm going to want to hang myself."

"It's a good album, Ian."

"It's a _suicidally depressing_ album."

"... that's the same thing. What you just said, that is exactly the same thing I just said."

"You are only allowed to make our shitty little flat so depressing. I can deal with the dead things in jars, but there are limits."

Peter rolled his eyes as he put the album he was holding back in the crate. Banmon smiled to herself -- not like she had anyone else to smile at, of course. Sure, they were a bit abrasive to each other, which always made Banmon as an observer a little bit ill at ease, just because she had always been on the more sensitive side. That said, this practically was the equivalent of uproarious banter, and even if it wasn't quite her style, the fact that Peter was enjoying himself accounted for something.

... she still wanted to instinctively dive behind Peter any time someone else entered the store, and only when she had a hard time moving did she remember, _oh, right,_ only to be on high alert again 30 seconds later.

It... it was gonna take some getting used to.

 

***

It was a little while later that they were finally departing, a few vinyls richer and a bit of cash poorer.   
"I haven't actually eaten anything today but a muffin on my break," Peter said, hands in his pockets. He idly ran his fingers over his digivice, almost like confirming that it was still there. "You want to get something to eat while we're here?"   
The record store was within a very short walk from a number of restaurants, so it wasn't an out-of-nowhere suggestion.

Ian agreed, and so the debate turned to what, exactly, to get.

Peter scratched his jaw. "I'll have to get something meatless for my plus-one."

"This is a hipster town, near a hipster record store. I don't think that'll be a problem," Ian said, checking his phone to look up reviews for restaurants in the area.

Peter cocked an eyebrow at him. "You do realize that we're the hipsters."

"No, really, mister 'wearing a scarf in June'? Us?"

Peter rolled his eyes and looked around, waiting for Ian's search results to bear fruit, when-- he did a double-take. He squinted through his glasses, but no-- that was definitely a familiar face across the street, headed for the sold-by-the-slice pizza place on the corner immediately opposite the record store. Familiar baseball cap, eyes down on his phone (or was it a D-Rive? Nope, definitely a D-Rive), not exactly the tallest sprout in the metaphorical garden-- that was definitely Sam.

"Huh."

Well, what were the odds.   
Not that he was going to just run over and say hi, that would be creepy.

(Unbeknownst to him, Banmon -- on high alert as she was -- had actually noticed him a short time before Peter himself did, but, you know, she very well couldn't just materialize to tell Peter this.)

"Pizza place is apparently way better than it used to be," Ian's voice cut through Peter's minor brain digression, "so that's where my vote is going."

Well, then.   
How fortuitous!

 

***

Sam was not looking where he was going; he was flipping through the esoteric options on his D-Rive, idly wondering if he could find a way for Gelermon to communicate without having to re-emerge.   
So lost was he in these trains of thought that he nearly smashed straight into another person.

"Uh-- sorry," he muttered, eyes down, deeply not interested.

"S'alright," an unfamiliar voice said-- the person he ran into. That wasn't the remarkable part.

"Hey," said a far more familiar voice, and Sam blinked a couple times as he snapped his attention up.

"Uh?" God, Sam, you're eloquent. He had run into a brown-haired dude who looked a few years older than him, significantly taller than him, and he had no idea who this guy was, but the other guy was... what's his name. Peter? Peter. "Hi."

"You know each other?" the brown-haired dude said, looking between Sam and Peter, and Peter nodded. Sam swore, for a split second, that he heard Gelermon growling.

"Vagugely," Peter said simply. He gestured to Sam and the brown-haired dude in turn. "Ian: this is Sam. Digimon stuff. Sam: this is my flatmate, Ian." Sam could see dawning comprehension on the stranger's (Ian's) face.

"Hi," Sam said flatly, nodding a vague acknowledgement.

"Heya, shorty," Ian said. He was taller than Peter, and Peter was taller than Sam, so he had _room_ to say this, but--

"Ha ha short jokes, hilarious, I'm going to punch you in the dick," Sam muttered. (Maybe Gelermon's comment had just put dick-punching on the mind.) Ian, to his surprise, grinned.

"I like him," he said sidelong to Peter, who shook his head with a sigh.

"You here for a reason?" Peter said, looking to Sam. When he said _reason_ , he meant _digimon_ ; Sam picked up on this, and shook his head.

"Nope." He held up his D-Rive and inclined his head towards it. "We're just getting food." Beat. "She was going to hang out in the back alley while I got food." Ian mouthed 'she?' at Peter, who mouthed 'digimon' back, and Sam waited for the exchange to finish before shrugging and turning, excusing himself.

"Hold on." Peter's voice behind him stopped him. "Haven't had the chance to check in with Banmon in a while. The back alley isn't going to get people walking through?" Sam nodded with lips pressed thin, and Peter looked over his shoulder. "Go ahead. I'll be along in a sec."

Ian waved over his shoulder as he carried on to go inside, while Peter followed Sam, who had already started to walk around the corner to get to the alleyway. The alleyway in question was narrow and cramped, with trash cans and old fire escapes. It was fenced off by an old wooden fence at one end, so it only had one way out, which helped cut down on cross traffic.

Gelermon materialized first with a swirl of green light, and she stretched out. She practically ignored Peter, looking imemdiately to Sam. "So you're going to get me pizza, too," she said with a grin, "or do I have to play up the puppy dog thing?"

"Pfft. Relax," Sam said, snorting as he placed a hand on her head.   
(Peter didn't comment on it, but seeing the change in his demeanor when he was speaking to Gelermon versus when he was talking to him and Ian was almost shocking.)

Banmon came out a few moments later in a swirl of pure-white light, and she peered around herself.   
"You doing alright?" Peter asked, kneeling down to be more on her level instead of making her drift up to his.

"Yes, mostly," she said, looking around. She waved meekly at Gelermon; the dog at least acknowledged her with a nod, which she certainly didn't do for her human partner. "Would it be okay if I stayed out here? I could... use a little time away from people."   
(Sure, it was... vaguely terrifying to be out here functionally alone -- aside from Gelermon -- but she had had more than her share of people for right now. She could use a little bit of detox time, and the pizza place was more crowded than the record store had been.)

"If you want to," Peter said after a moment, "I'm not going to stop you."

"It'll be a regular girls night out," Gelermon said, interrupting herself to butt in; she had just been in the middle of giving her order to Sam, but couldn't stop herself from commenting. She rolled her eyes. They didn't even need to look at her face to know that-- it dripped from every syllable.

"... right," Banmon said slowly, but nodded up at Peter. "You'll be back soon, right?"

"We're going to get food and be right back out. I'll get you something," he reassured her, nodding before standing upright again. He looked to Sam. "You coming back around front?"

Sam paused, looking back at the digimon, before, "Yeah."

The humans took back off to circle around to the front of the building while the digimon got comfortable; Sam kept a few steps behind Peter. When they finally made their way into the dimly-lit pizza place, there was already a bit of a line between them and Ian (himself still a ways from the front of the line). Ian, noticing them, beckoned Peter come join him. When Sam stayed put, Ian gave him a quirked eyebrow and gestured for him to cut in behind him.

Sam apprehensively did; aside from an eyeroll from the woman immediately behind them, nobody said boo. He wasn't exactly... thrilled? He knew Peter at least a little bit, but not this roommate of his, and he had never been the world's biggest social butterfly.   
Understatement of the century.

Peter spoke up first, and he didn't speak loudly so as not to be overheard-- not that it would matter that much, but still. "You mentioned that you'd been messing with the D-Rives," he prompted, looking sidelong at Sam. "Aside from the minimizing thing, what else have you figured about them?" Sam perked up so much it was almost cartoonish.   
(That is pretty much exactly the reaction Peter was gunning for.)

"Not a lot," Sam admitted, after his initial surprise at being asked to talk about something relevant to his interests wore off.

Damn.

Sam continued, and turned his D-Rive over in his hand. "They're like nothing I've actually seen before." He, uh, decided to leave out the part where he nearly tore his apart trying to get into its electronic guts, but seeing as how it had _straight up refused to open up_ , no harm, no foul, right?

"Considering their delivery method, I'm not surprised," Peter said.

"Right, the whole _delivery by light beam_ thing isn't exactly industry standard," Sam said. "Aside from the fact that whatever their deal is, though, fucked if I know. They're a big D-Rive shaped mystery."

Peter stroked his chin in thought. "How do you know they're called D-Rives, anyway?" he said after a moment.

Sam blinked. "I plugged it into a computer. That's what the device was called. Hyphen and all. I suppose it could also be _drive_ going by the fact that they yell about _drive evolution_ but, eh, I think D-Rive sounds cooler--"

"You plugged a mystery device sight unseen into your computer?" Peter asked, raising an eyebrow as he cut Sam off.

Sam blinked, giving Peter a _do you think I'm stupid?_ look. " _A_ computer. I have like, a half a dozen old paperweight laptops. I plugged it into one I wasn't afraid to lose."

Beat. Peter shrugged coolly. "Fair enough." Pause. "So where do you think it came from, then?"

Sam was still a bit defensive and sarcastic, and technological tinkering wasn't really Peter's forte -- there was a reason he was a liberal arts major -- but it turned out they _did_ have a common ground.   
Trying to explain what was going on.   
Admittedly, Peter was more focused on the _why_ , and Sam's interest more lay in the _how_ , but still.

They were both looking for answers, here. In different ways, sure-- but they had that much in common. That was something.

 

***

Outside, conversation had been sparse between the two digimon.

"Ugh," Gelermon said, leaning against the garbage can and folding her arms. She had just been trying to engage Banmon in conversation for the third time, but Banmon had been put off by Gelermon's... let's call it _blunt and forceful_ communication style. "Nevermind, then. I tried, gold star for me."

"I'm... sorry?" Banmon said, not entirely sure what to say.

Gelermon snorted. "Ugh, enough with the apologizing. You're like Sam used to be, but even _worse_. I'm almost impressed."

"... um?" Banmon said, blinking slowly. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure I follow."

"I mean the whole," Gelermon gestured vaguely with one paw, "shrinking violet act. You've got it on lock."

Banmon blinked slowly at her again. "O...kay?" She paused and tilted her head, while Gelermon huffed and looked around. "What do you mean, like how Sam used to be?" she tried. It certainly got Gelermon's attention.

"What's it matter to you?" she said, and Banmon shrunk back.

"I was just-- you brought it up!" she said in a defensive, albeit squeaky, voice. "I thought, maybe if we were going to have to--"

"To what?" Gelermon cut her off. "Pal around? Be bestest buddies?" She faked a swoon and rolled her eyes almightily. "Gag me."

Banmon didn't seem to find it that amusing. "You don't have to be a jerk to me!" she said with sudden force. It wasn't a _lot_ , but it was definitely a bit of an outburst. "I was just trying--!" Banmon seemed to realize she had raised her voice, and she seemed as surprised as anyone. She immediately quieted back down to her usual gentle tone. "I was just trying to ask you about your partner," she explained. "That's all..." Beat. "Sorry I -- didn't mean to get--" she trailed off, and wrung her hands nervously.

Gelermon had to admit she hadn't really expected it to happen-- she was kind of expecting the ghost to be a total doormat, so even thus much was a bit of a pleasant surprise. She put her hands on her hips and sighed, thinking for a moment. She looked up and down the alley, and seeing nobody who could interfere, she shrugged.

"It's not like it's a super interesting story," Gelermon said. "Sam's got really bad anxiety. Like, you know how some people on the internet say they have bad anxiety to look cute and quirky?" She paused for a half beat, but didn't wait for Banmon to actually respond. "Yeah, I'm gonna personally punch every single one of those people in the face."

Banmon blinked. "That's, um. Evocative."

Gelermon folded her arms and sighed. "Long story short, and I'm not going into details because it's not my damn place to, but he barely left the house for two years. We're talking dropped out of school, got his GED, threw deuces to the rest of civilized society. Can't blame him, honestly, people fuckin' suck." That last part was kind of an aside.   
She shrugged again, looking at Banmon. "And _you_ , ghosty-girl, remind me of him during that time but _even worse_."

"I'm... sorry?" Banmon said, kind of at a loss for what she was supposed to say to this information. This isn't to say she was unsympathetic; she felt like this kind of explained Sam's behavior, to a degree, and she definitely felt a distinct pang of empathy, but Gelermon didn't really seem up for discussion of the matter. "I wouldn't have guessed that about him, if that helps?"

"It's whatever," Gelermon said, flipping one of her long ears over her shoulder like a dismissive hair-flip. "But you should consider working on it."

"... I like me the way I already am," Banmon mumbled, but it was quiet enough that Gelermon either didn't hear her or was willing to pretend she didn't hear her.   
(It was the latter.)

Or maybe, it was the sudden sense of Something in the air that kept this conversation from continuing.

Gelermon's ears perked up and she narrowed her eyes.

 

***

"... so I might be overthinking it, but that's also an option," Sam said. He had his D-Rive in one hand and was gesturing at it with his other hand. They had already placed their orders and were standing off to the side, waiting for their numbers to be called. "Or it could just be aliens. That's what half of the people I've seen seem to think."

"Somehow," Peter said, stroking his chin, "I feel like the conversation doesn't lose much by dismissing that one, no."

"Then I'm putting all my bets on that contingency," Ian chimed in, eyes fixed on his phone. He had interjected a couple times, but he had mostly just been half-listening to the conversation. It didn't really involve him, you know?

"Hedging your bets?" Sam said, raising an eyebrow.

"Mostly just betting against Peter."

They had aaaaalmost become comfortable (or at least, Sam had almost gotten comfortable talking to Peter and to a lesser extent Ian), when something immediately snapped Peter and Sam's attention away from their conversation. One guess what it was!   
That's right-- Sam's D-Rive lit up. What else would it be?

"Dammit," Sam muttered.

Peter, staying tight-lipped, pulled his own D-Rive out and, indeed, his had also activated. Luckily, they just looked like they were looking at their phones, aside from the looks of vague distress and displeasure.   
(Okay, so maybe they looked like they were looking at their phones and reading the news.)

"Maybe it's not hostile," Peter said, looking sidelong at Sam.

"And maybe it tapdances and sings showtunes," Sam said right back, swiping his thumb across the screen to bring up what limited info it could offer. _Strigimon_ , the little pop-up window said, _champion level_.

Sam suddenly felt annoyed that, for all the features he had found, he couldn't find one that _was more helpful than that_. Either way-- it didn't bode well. Sam looked up to tell Peter that they should investigate, but by the time he ripped his eyes off his D-Rive screen, Peter was already gone.   
He looked around; Ian gestured towards the door with a tilt of his head.

"He already took off," he clarified, then paused for a beat. "Digimon stuff?" Sam nodded, lips pressed tight, and Ian shrugged. "I'll grab your pizza for you. Go. Be free."

Sam blinked a couple times, muttered a vague _thanks_ , and took off out the door. He stumbled a bit, blinking blearily into the evening light of almost-summer as his eyes adjusted to the change. He looked around up and down the street, then at his D-Rive.   
And _then_ he realized that he should probably reconvene with Gelermon.

He was only a few seconds behind Peter; as he turned the corner around the building, he could see the trailing end of Peter's hipster scarf turning ito the alleyway. He was quick to follow.   
As they arrived, Banmon peeked out from behind a trash can, a worried expression on her face. ... ... more worried than her default worried expression, that is.

"About time!" Gelermon said, bounding out from behind another can, knocking it over in the process.

"I take it, then," Sam said, looking between Gelermon and Banmon, "that I won't be breaking any news to either of you if I say there's a digimon coming?"

Peter looked at the digimon, who were looking expectantly at them.   
He adjusted his glasses, then looked sidelong at Sam. "Seems that's the case."

"Duh!" Gelermon said, rolling her eyes.

"Um... yes. I heard it," Banmon piped up meekly, gesturing at the sky.

"And if _she_ heard it," Gelermon said, not pausing for explanation, "then you know _I_ did. You know. Since I actually have ears." This... explained very little. One could forgive Sam and Peter for not feeling stellar about this.

"Heard what?" Peter said, but just about as soon as he asked, they got an answer.

It wasn't _loud_ , but it was hard to miss, much like how you can hear a firetruck from miles away. It was long and loud, distant, and sounded... avian. Kind of as if someone who had only a vague, pop culture-informed idea of what birds sound like had combined the screech of a hawk with the throatiness of an owl, and then cranked up the volume by a hundred decibels.   
Sure, they didn't have proof that it was the digimon, but let's be real -- after encountering a giant beetle, it was safe to assume that any really loud, really huge animal noise was _probably_ courtesy of a digimon.

Gelermon's fur bristled, and she looked up at Sam. "Come on. Let's you and me get a head start, here." She cast a sidelong glance to Banmon and Peter, more the former than the latter. She was trying to communicate without saying as much that she wasn't counting on Banmon to be a huge boon. Not that they were _useless_ , you know, just...   
Well.   
Gelermon had, historically, always been of the opinion that they could manage fine on their own. Why would now be any different?

Sam followed her eyeline, and though she didn't say it, he got her message-- and he couldn't help but kind of feel it, to a certain degree. Despite the fact that they did have common ground, he was having a hard time getting a read on Peter. Admittedly, he wasn't the best at reading people in the first place, but still!

Peter was too busy recalling Banmon into his own D-Rive to pay mind to any of this. Sam followed suit with Gelermon.

"Dammit," Peter said flatly, looking at his radar again.   
A car alarm went off in the distance.

Sam and Peter took off running, knowing they didn't have a whole lot of time to waste.

 

***

Strigimon snorted derisively as she spread her wings to soar. The little humans below were looking upon her with confusion, with fear-- but none of these _plebians_ were what she was looking for.   
None of them were going to gain her the glory she so rightly deserved. For their insolence -- for not being what she was looking for-- she had fired off a Razor Feather, and her feathers had riddled holes through their metal vehicles, cutting through them with distressing ease.

It had been, admittedly, mostly for her own amusement, but the loud noises -- the honking alarms, and the sound of sirens -- were less to her liking, so she decided not to dawdle.

She knew some of them had to be close.

(Okay, she was guessing they were close, but was rarely wrong.)

 

***

"I'm going to guess," Peter said flatly as they turned around a corner and saw an enormous bird flying overhead, "that's our mark."

"You think?" Sam said, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Peter. "What gave you the hint?" Peter didn't respond to his sarcasm; he just adjusted his glasses

In a flash of light, Gelermon and Banmon both materialized next to their partners-- Gelermon looked excited, and Banmon, apprehensive. They could hear clamor and what sounded like car alarms going off. Any hope they may have had that this digimon wasn't hostile was evaporating rapidly.

"Hope you're ready to kick some ass," Gelermon said-- it was hard to tell who she was talking to.

Damningly, the shape seemed to notice them, the closer it got. If nothing else, it was suddenly descending, and it was hard to take that as anything but a sign that they were being homed in on.   
Banmon ducked behind Peter, while Gelermon bounded forward to put herself between the unknown threat and the others. Or, the unknown threat and Sam. Mostly Sam. Entirely Sam.

Without warning, the bird (the Digimon) swooped, and the distance between them was suddenly significantly less than anyone would have liked it to be. Arcing down between the buildings with remarkable grace for its size, Strigimon was, unsurprisingly, a giant bird. It resembled something like a cross between an owl and an eagle, albeit with a twenty-foot wingspan.

"Razor Feather!" it cried, flapping its huge wings and releasing a flurry of feathers that glowed brightly as they flew at Sam, Peter, and their unwitting Digimon. She missed-- luckily, it seemed that she had attacked prematurely, as the shower of feathers stopped a good fifteen feet ahead of them.

Considering the fact that they sliced through the body of a parked car like a hot knife through butter, this was something they were _very_ thankful for.

"Moon Howler!" Gelermon yelled before anyone could tell her otherwise. She reared back and spat her energy beam at Strigimon, but Strigimon artfully dodged the beam with a (perhaps unnecessarily) dramatic flourish. The bird tucked in its wings and spun like a corkscrew as Gelermon's attack sailed by harmlessly, and then it burst back out to its full wingspan.   
However, it did _stop_ , flapping here to look down at the small gathering of humans and Digimon. They could get a good look at it now-- it was mostly tan, with brown and cream across its body. Its mostly natural colours brought out its few red and orange accents, as well as its piercing yellow eyes.

"Aha!" it (she, rather-- her voice was obviously feminine) declared, descending and delicately alighting in the middle of the road.

Behind himself, Peter could feel Banmon shrink down even harder to stay out of sight.

Lucky that traffic had completely backed up, or this might have been even more of a problem.

"Only one, I take it?" she said, peering -- indeed -- owlishly at Gelermon, and sighing dramatically. "Thought I saw... ah, well. I suppose it's better than nothing. I can gather the others at some later point, I assume, get my full dues..."

Peter furrowed his brow and hummed quietly; Sam cast him a sidelong glance, looking slightly confused, but Peter ignored him. "Dues?" he said, looking instead at Strigimon. Strigimon, in her turn, seemed slightly confused that a human was addressing her.

"It's no concern of yours," she said sharply.

"It kind of is, seeing as how she," Peter gestured at Gelermon, "is kind of with my friend here." He made absolutely no mention of Banmon; if Strigimon hadn't noticed her, he wasn't going to point her out.   
Sam gave Peter a _what are you getting at_ look with lips pressed tight and eyebrow quirked. Gelermon, hilariously, shot the _exact same_ expression over her shoulder at Peter. It was actually kind of uncanny how similar they looked.

See, he couldn't say it, but Peter had a feeling, and he was going to take a shot here.   
Strigimon, just as Peter had hoped, looked slightly taken aback. "Is that _so,_ " she said, and Peter knew that he had struck onto something-- even if he didn't know _what_.

Gelermon caught on. "Hey, yeah," she said, darting her eyes between Strigimon and back to Sam. "I've got a human. That means, you know." She certainly hoped that Strigimon knew, because _she_ sure didn't!

"That _can't_ be right," Strigimon mumbled. Peter was feeling mighty proud of himself, right up until the point that Strigimon decided to resolve her conundrum her own way-- that is to say, by lunging forward and grabbing Gelermon in her talons.

" _Hey_!" Gelermon yelled, struggling immediately. "Moon Howler!" She fired the swirling green beam right at Strigimon's underside, but it was like trying to shoot a water gun at a brick wall.

"You can't fool me," Strigimon said, glaring at Peter and Sam. "I will return, and you _humans_ will pay for attempting to harbor a refugee." Pause. "And more importantly, attempting to impede my ascent to glory."   
Her talons scraped horribly against the concrete as she picked Gelermon up, and lifted into the air with the dog still attempting to break free. With a mighty flap of her wings, she turned and prepared to fly away.

"Gelermon!" Sam blurted, looking around frantically for something he could throw. In a fleeting moment of passion, he almost threw his D-Rive. (That, he realized, was probably not wise.) In lieu of that, he lunged forward, preparing to try and physically intervene himself.   
A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind at once-- that Banmon wasn't going to be able to help, that he didn't know how close he had to be to Gelermon to get the evolution thing to work, that he didn't know how to make the evolution thing happen, that _this asshole was not helping_ \--

Banmon drifted to Peter's side instead of behind him.

Peter looked over at Banmon, and she looked right back. He met her eye and nodded once; she frowned, but then looked back up at Strigimon. She paused for a half a second before she slowly nodded.   
She threw herself forward, bypassing Sam easily. Peter's D-Rive, held tight in his hand, began to swirl with light.

"Banmon, drive evolve to... Banshemon!"

As she grew in size, her ability to efficiently follow Strigimon followed suit. "Banshee's Call!" she cried, and all around her, shining white spirits materialized. They accelerated past Banshemon herself and flew straight for Strigimon.

The owl, in all her infinite wisdom, rotated her head to look over her shoulder at what was happening behind her. Her timing was impeccable; right as she turned, one of the little white spirits was on a collision course with her face. The little ghosts pelted her and she squawked in a most undignified manner. Not expecting to actually be _hurt_ (for, indeed, Banshemon's spirits packed a punch), she tumbled out of the air and back down onto the street, dropping Gelermon moments before she impacted the concrete.

Gelermon made an _oof!_ noise, but was quick to return to her feet. She growled as she righted herself, and boy howdy-- she was ready for revenge.

Luckily, Sam's D-rive seemed to agree, and began to glow green.

"Gelermon, drive evolve to... Frekimon!"

Strigimon looked between Frekimon and Banshemon, confusion plain on her face. "How on _earth_ did you manage--" she blurted, temporarily losing her cool as she picked herself off the ground, but she quickly regained her composure.   
'Regained her composure' meant she attacked.

 

"Owl Talon!" Strigimon yelled, rushing close and leaping at Banshemon. Her talons glowed crimson as she did, and when she slashed out at Banshemon, she tore long, jagged rips into her robe before digging her claws in. Despite the apparent lack of substantial form for her to dig into, she was able to grab hold of Banshemon, and began ripping and tearing at her.

"Spirit Ripper!" Banshemon yelled in desperation. Her claws began to glow and she raked them across (or rather, through) Strigimon, which was at least enough to dislodge her. Strigimon let Banshemon go, backing up as she rose into the air, but she was far from done.

"Razor Feather!" she yelled, leaping into the air and flapping hard, and not just to gain altitude. As she flapped, she released another rain of wickedly sharp feathers.

"Shit!"

Was it Peter or Sam that blurted that? It didn't really matter-- both of them, not wanting to be cut to ribbons anytime soon, stumbled backwards, but this wasn't enough to get them totally out of range. They braced for--   
Nothing. Frekimon leapt into the line of fire, covering her face with one arm as she shieleded the humans-- but Peter got the incredibly distinctive feeling that she was not jumping in to save _him_.

"You okay?" Frekimon growled, low and quiet and looking over her shoulder specifically at Sam, which confirmed Peter's suspicion. Sam nodded, and Frekimon snapped her attention to Strigimon again.

"Are you--" Banshemon began, but Frekimon wasn't in the mood to answer silly questions like that.

"New Moon Fire!" the wolf yelled instead, spitting the blast of green fire right at Strigimon. It struck true, knocking Strigimon out of the air again, but she at least saved enough dignity to avoid tumbling backwards.

"Banshee's Call!" Banshemon cried, and once more a flurry of white ghosts materialized around her and threw themselves at Strigimon.

"Hey. You alright?" Sam asked, asking Peter the question that Frekimon hadn't. It took Peter a moment to snap back to reality; he was intently watching and listening to the fight.

"Oh. Yeah, nothing busted," he said, nodding and looking around as he got to his feet. He held out a hand for Sam; after a moment of hesitation, Sam took a hold of it, and Peter helped him to his feet.

It was now that onlookers were beginning to gather. People were getting out of their cars and coming out of buildings to gawk, yelling, capturing video on their phones...   
Nobody had seen the interactions that would have given them away as connected to the digimon, right? Right. That was the important part. ... ... okay, it was one of the important parts. The fact that sirens were getting closer? Also a very important part. They had to act quickly.

"Such underhanded tactics _would_ suit you, I suppose," Strigimon said, righting herself and picking herself up into the air as she glowered at the two digimon before her. "It doesn't surprise me at all that you'd sink to such tactics as deceit, trickery, hiding-- clearly a fitting end to be brought by my claws back to--"

"Oh my god, shut up!" Frekimon said, growling as green fire began to gather in her mouth again.

Peter wanted to chastise her for her hastiness-- to tell her that no, actually, let Strigimon ramble as much as she wanted-- but he had the niggling feeling that might not go over well. He held off.

"Ravenous Hunter!" Frekimon cried, leaping for Strigimon. The flames around her wrists ingited, engulfing her hands; at the apex of her leap, she slashed out at Strigimon.

Strigimon, however, was not about to simply wait around for Frekimon to reach her. "Owl Talon!" she yelled, swooping; her talons glowed red for a split second before they collided with Frekimon's face. Frekimon quite suddenly lost her forward momentum, and fell to the ground.

"Is that _all_ ," Strigimon taunted, tossing her head dramatically.

"Big talk for an overdramatic feather duster," Sam muttered to nobody in particular; Peter expelled a huff of dry laughter through his nose. Strigimon continued.

"Surely, you should know that you've no chance against _me_. If I were you, I'd simply give up now!"

"I'd rather not," Banshemon said, quietly but firmly. Being able to fly, she had much less worry of being knocked out of a jump, so she closed the distance between herself and Strigimon with surprising quickness. "Spirit Ripper!" she cried, her claws glowing white as she slashed out at Strigimon.

Strigimon hooted in indignation as she flapped backwards frantically to get away from Banshemon's attack. Peter and Sam could see her yellow eyes fix on them again. Perhaps she was preparing to fire off another razor feather; it didn't matter, because both Banshemon and Frekimon saw her focus on their human partners, too, and decided to be pre-emptive.

"Banshee's Call!"

"New Moon Fire!"

White ghosts and green fire met Strigimon at more or less the same time, and as they exploded, Strigimon let loose with a loud keen and began to pixellate.

"Damn the--!" she managed in one last caw before she burst into motes of light-- and luckily, the onlookers were so distracted by the fact that a giant bird just exploded into light to notice that those pixels of light rushed down into Sam and Peter's D-Rives.   
Banshemon and Frekimon stayed where they were, breathing heavily with the rush of battle. With two more surges of light, they shrunk back down to their rookie forms-- and were becoming rapidly aware that they had spectators and rubberneckers staring at them.

Banmon, in particular, seemed not hugely fond of this idea; Gelermon was still glaring at where Strigimon had been moments before.   
After a moment, Gelermon glanced out of the corner of her eye at Banmon; when they made eye contact, Gelermon nodded and smirked just the faintest bit. She wasn't going to say _thanks for the assist_ , but she could at least imply it.

Peter didn't notice this small exchange; he was busy looking up at where Strigimon had been. "I wonder," he muttered to himself.

"Hey, cool idea-- wonder all you want when we're not in broad daylight, maybe?" Sam suggested in a hiss, glancing around. He, for one, hadn't forgotten the blow-up that had surrounded the ogre incident; he didn't want to get caught in the crossfire here, and didn't want Peter to, either.   
Peter, getting lost up in his own head, actually kind of had-- so after a moment to come to his senses, Peter nodded.

He cast a look over at Banmon, who quickly caught his eye; Peter nodded, jerking his head just slightly, and he ducked back around the corner. Banmon followed, and with a flash of light, she was minimized into his D-Rive.

Sam whistled at Gelermon, which snapped her to attention; she bounded towards him as he too ducked around the corner, and minimized her into his D-Rive.

With the sounds of sirens behind them and trying their best to act nonchalant, the two of them began to walk back from whence they had come, but Peter's mind was already somewhere else; Strigimon's words had set the gears in his brain in motion, and he was trying to make sense of what little they knew.

Sam, on the other hand, felt a deep sense of dread, and his mind was very much in the present. He had seen people taking video-- no way this was going to go unnoticed.

Sam found himself looking over his shoulder the entire time that they walked away, as if waiting for someone to follow them.

Nobody did.   
This did nothing to ease either of their minds.


	8. Episode 08: Radio Static

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to say here! How much longer can I stay on-schedule? IT IS A MYSTERRYYYYYYYY actually I'm really happy with, A, how I've managed to keep on-schedule, and B, how the chapters thus far have come out. I hope literally anyone else is getting as much of a kick out of this as I am.

"... and with the rotors, that's gonna come out to twelve hundred forty seven and change," Xander said in his best customer service voice, bracing for an outrage that, thankfully, didn't come. It was twenty minutes past five, and he was clocking out in ten minutes, and he _really_ didn't want his day to end on a frustrated customer note.

The man, for whom Xander was currently ringing up services, groaned and shook his head. "Oof. I'm thinkin' I should've gotten the brakes checked out earlier."

"Wasn't gonna say it, but yeah," Xander said, smiling sardonically; the man chuckled as he went to dig for his wallet.

The news running on the TV -- an ancient old thing, crammed on a bracket mount up in the opposite corner of the waiting room -- filled the silence. "... and many eyewitnesses are reporting that electronics they had on their person at the time of the incident have experienced minor data corruption. If anyone has any information about yesterday's incident, or the similar incidents that have happened over the past month," the newscaster was saying, "they are advised to contact the Atlas Park Police Department as well as our tip line..."

"You heard about all this?" the customer said, leaning on the counter and gesturing at the television as he fished out his card. "Heard there was another incident over near Market yesterday." He gestured in the vaguely easterly direction of the street he was referencing.

"Yeah," Xander said, shrugging one shoulder. "I've heard." That was as neutral an answer as he could manage. He had heard firsthand pretty much moments after it happened, and he himself had had some choice thoughts about the matter. None of those thoughts were appropriate to share with customers, what with concerns about coming across as professional.

"Pretty wild, don't you think? I've been seein' stories on about it since, oh, on and off since about May... lotta people are claiming it's monsters, but all the video people've been takin's been gettin' all screwed up."

"Sounds like someone's screwing with them, if you ask me," Xander said, keeping his voice even. "Hasn't really disturbed my life yet, so honestly I cant say it's my biggest concern," he continued, _lying through his teeth_ and doing an admirable job of it. "Here's your receipt."

"Here's hopin' it doesn't, you seem like a nice young man."

Right. He suuuure was. The bell on the door jingled as said door swung shut, and the customer took his leave; Xander massaged the bridge of his nose. "I need like, fifteen cigarettes."

"You don't even smoke," a coworker said, popping his head in behind Xander.

"I sure don't," Xander said, not even turning around. "What's your point?"

"Hey, don't bite my head off. Was he that bad?"

Xander shrugged one shoulder. the customer hadn't been bad, outside of the fact that he wouldn't shut up even before the subject turned to the news; of course, Xander had a pretty good handle on tuning out anything that wasn't essential. It was a learned and practiced skill.  
"Nah. I've just had other sh-- things on my mind lately."

The attack yesterday, and both Sam and (ugh) Peter had been perfectly willing to share their ample thoughts on what had happened. He had skimmed it, but it had seemed that they had gotten at least a little bit more insight into why these Digimon were getting up in their shit so much.  
Vaguely. Very vaguely.  
Something about _glory_ and _refugees_.

Whatever.

Having that damn news running sure wasn't helping-- and neither was the fact that he could feel his phone, in his pocket, blow up with text notifications. He would bet money, he told himself, that it was some Digimon shit. _Again._

So he assumed, anyway.

As Xander headed out to his car fifteen minutes later, it turned out that he would have lost that bet. The messages weren't from any of the _team squad_ at all-- they were from his bandmates. Mostly Paul. Like, 90% of them were from Paul. As he settled into the driver's seat, he flicked through the notifications.

 _dude_ the first one read.  
_dude call me when you get off work_  
_ps how late are you working today?_  
_dude_

"What the fuck is going on that's so important?" That's how Xander greeted Paul once he called-- no hello, no what's up, cutting straight to the point. "Because if it's less important than someone's goddamn mom dying, there's no fuckin' reason you should've blown up my phone like an insecure girlfriend."  
Tactful as ever.

"Dude, Xander, Xander, my dude, my guy," Paul's voice crackled out of the speaker, so excited he almost cut off Xander's little rant, "you know that gig at the Pit this weekend? Opening for The Phobias?"

"Yeah," Xander said, raising an eyebrow. They had tried to get it, but they'd gotten shunted, and he'd long ago accepted that fact.

" _So_ , we're playing it now."

There was a moment where Xander blinked, before:  
"What, seriously?"

"Yeah!" Paul's excitement was practically tangible even over the phone. "The band that was going to open had to back out and I slid in and secured it for us. Apparently the booking guy saw us at the Rock Star and decided we'd do in a pinch. Please, hold your applause. ... who am I kidding? Applause, please."

Xander couldn't help but grin. "Shit yeah!" The Pit was not, by any means, a glamorous gig-- it was a little music club, probably even more of a dump than the Rock Star was, but that was part of the appeal, dammit-- and opening for The Phobias, one of Atlas Park's most promising under-the-radar punk bands, only served to sweeten the deal.

A moment, as reality suddenly seeped in.

"Wait. That gig's on Saturday, right?"

"Yeah."

"It's Wednesday now. As in, four days before this gig."

"Also yeah."

"Fuck."

" _Also_ also yeah. I mean, look, I get it if you can't, but if we're gonna back out I gotta know now--"

Xander sighed, and sat back in his seat. Like hell he needed this on top of all this monster bullshit, but also like hell was he prepared to give up this chance.  
"I'm in."

 

***

And now we flash forward to Friday afternoon.

"... it's just that I don't think it's really fair to judge," Oremon was in the middle of saying, "considering I don't have fingers."

"You _could_ just stop trying to challenge James to fighting games, you know?" Meghan offered as a suggestion, looking over at her friend as she pulled her keyes out of the ignition.

Oremon looked back at her flatly. "No."

Meghan... didn't mean to laugh at him, really! But she couldn't help it-- the deadpan delivery paired with Oremon's bruised ego over such a silly thing... she kind of burst out laughing.

Oremon folded his arms. " _Hmph._ "

"You ready?" Meghan said as she regained her composure. She fished her D-Rive out of her pocket with a bit of difficulty, as she was still in the driver's seat of her car; Oremon snorted, but he stretched out his legs and nodded. In the blink of an eye was minimized back into Meghan's digivice so that she could walk right on in to the Lotus, unhindered by trying to hide a giant talking goat.

See, she had agreed to meet up with Natalie-- and not even because of Digimon stuff, either! As it turned out, being able to socialize and talk with someone who understood the good ol' Digimon struggle, even if the conversations weren't _about_ Digimon, was a lot more freeing than maybe any of them had expected it to be.  
Oremon, for his part, just liked finally being able to get out-- even if being minimized took some adjustment, the change of scenery was doing him a lot of good. Meghan could tell, even if he was still exactly as grumpy and gruff as ever. After the Strigimon incident, he had practically demanded to come along whenever Meghan was out and about in the past couple days. She knew this was kind of thanks to his conviction that something might happen at any moment, but... she had a feeling that not all of it was just protectiveness and grouchiness.

She was, of course, correct-- but good luck getting Oremon to admit as such.

Seeing as they were meeting at the Lotus, they had extended the offer to Peter to come along. He had declined; it was his day off, and he refused to step foot in the Lotus if he didn't have to. Fair enough.

As Meghan walked in to the dimly-lit café, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but once she had, it wasn't hard to spot Natalie. Today was not a busy day-- there were maybe four tables occupied, and one of them, tucked over in the corner, had a familiar redhead scrolling through something on her phone and blind to the world.

Meghan tried waving, but quickly realizing that Natalie wasn't going to look up, she closed the distance between them.  
"What's up?" Meghan said as she walked up; Natalie didn't seem to have been expecting her, so she jumped a little bit, but she quickly righted herself.

"Oh, hey!" Natalie said. "Sorry, I kind of--" she gestured vaguely at her phone. She tucked said phone into her bag, freeing up her hands to grab her drink.

"Yeah, I could tell," Meghan said, sitting down. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on both of her hands. "What's up? More of the same?" she said, peering at Nat's phone. By 'more of the same', she meant 'digimon stuff', and was only asking half-sarcastically.

"You know, surprisingly, no," Natalie said-- surprisingly, indeed. It might be easy to overlook that their lives weren't yet one hundred percent about Digimon.  
Keyword: yet. (Give it time.) "I was just reading something while I was waiting and, you know, kinda got distracted."

Meghan nodded her understanding, and with her chin still resting on her palms, she looked around. "I actually don't think I've ever been here before," she remarked.

Natalie raised an eyebrow. "No? And here I was," she said wryly, "thinking that coming here was basically a requirement for attending NWSU."

"Well, I don't go to Northwest, which, you know, probably has something to do with it," Meghan said with a wry smile of her own.

Natalie tilted her head and blinked in mild bemusement. "Really? I could have sworn you said you did..." she said, tapping her chin as she tried to remember, but Meghan was on the ball and ready to provide answers.

"Nope!" Meghan smiled and leaned forward on her hands. "I'm doing two years for an AA at Mountainside," she said, referring to a community college on the northern side of town. "I miiiight transfer to Northwest after, but, you know, art major and all, may as well get on the cheap what _can_ be gotten on the cheap, you know?" She shrugged one shoulder.  
(It had taken a lot of finagling to get her parents to go along with that much, so she was still willing to call it a victory.)

Natalie nodded along, taking a sip of her drink. "Art major?"

"Photography!" Meghan provided, beaming. "Because, you know, I hate the prospect of ever having a well-paid job in my field," she added, still smiling despite the sarcasm and vague defeatism. She sounded remarkably like she had heard this exact assessment of her major more than once.

"Man, I'm an English major, talk to me about it," Natalie said, rolling her eyes with a smile.

As it turned out, the two of them got along on more fronts than simply digimon. They were talking like close friends -- instead of friendly acquaintences who had met barely under a month ago -- almost immediately.  
(What a long month it had been though.)  
Meghan practically bubbled over with commentary on everything Natalie said, and Natalie had a knack for asking questions to keep the conversation flowing.

Surprisingly, if you put a couple of socially-minded extroverts together, they'll make fast friends. Go figure.

They started talking about Meghan's photography, how she got into it, how she was working on building up a portfolio, and it segued from there into discussions of movies (Natalie made sure to recommend some great old B-movies), and from there... well, pretty much everything was free game.  
As sure as the tide coming in, though, the conversation did end up taking a turn for the monster-related.

"I don't know, like..." Meghan said, humming as she thought. "Oremon's been really worried about something going wrong."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, like, he's acting like there's gonna be a digimon attack every other day," Meghan said, sticking her tongue out playfully. "Being all, look both ways before crossing the street, make sure you've got your four foot tall talking goat before going anywhere a monster might turn up." She could practically _feel_ Oremon's unamused snort from beside her, even if he was safely minimized. She grinned.

"Well, Raumon's been coming out with me a lot of the time these days," Natalie said, opening up her messenger bag and surreptitiously pulling out her D-Rive, just enough for Meghan to see it before she dropped it back into the depths of the bag. "Just in case, you know?"

"Yeah, I guess," Meghan said, drumming her fingers on her cheek in thought. Beat. "I think we've been pretty lucky so far, though? I mean... for a given value of lucky. Not so lucky for the people who have to pay for car repairs and stuff."

"Right?" Natalie said, shrugging one shoulder. "No, like... I don't know. I know _I'd_ rather not be caught unawares. Can't say I'm a huge fan of surprises when surprises are monsters with a grudge."

"No kidding," Meghan said, puffing out one cheek in thought, but her thoughts were interrupted by the jingling of the bell on the cafe door. Normally, this wouldn't interrupt her, but both she and Natalie noticed at the same time, out of the corner of their eye, that the person pushing the door open was a familiar face.

Xander -- for, yes indeedy, it was Xander walking into the café, even if the addition of glasses made Natalie double-take -- wasn't paying attention, eyes on his phone, until Meghan called to him:  
"Hey!"

He looked up from his phone and blinked. He noticed the girls and raised a hand in greeting, then turned his attention to the barista ready to take his drink order.

"Talk about coincidence," Natalie remarked to nobody in particular, but Meghan hummed in agreement. They didn't have much time to mull over it; Xander crossed over to them while he waited for them to make his coffee.

"Hey. What up."  
He sounded like he hadn't slept in the past twenty-four hours, which, honestly, he might not have.  
Both Natalie and Meghan had assumed that his eyes weren't naturally that piercing shade of yellow, and judging by the fact that right now his eyes were both very dark brown and the bloodshot of someone who hasn't slept enough recently, the glasses made sense.

"You look..." Well, Natalie wasn't going to say _like shit_ , but... "Tired?"  
Xander caught her drift anyway.

"You mean I look like shit? Yeah, you're not the first to tell me." (They got the distinct impression that Desmon was the culprit, here.) "S'why I'm here. Coffee." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at where his drink was being prepared. "Why're you here?" he said, looking between the two of them. "Did I miss some new Digimon shit?"

 

"Nope," Meghan said, shaking her head, "just doing that whole social thing, y'know?"

"Not a damn clue," Xander said in a flat deadpan and Meghan couldn't help but laugh a little at his delivery.

"Are you doing something that brings you down here?" Natalie asked after a moment of thought. "I mean, this seems pretty far away from your neck of the woods."

"Yuh. Band shit."

"That what's been keeping you total radio silence the past couple days?" Natalie asked. Not that Xander was always super talkative, but since Tuesday, the group chat in general had actually kind of started to come out of their collective shells... all except for Xander. Which, sure, he wasn't the most sociable, but he hadn't taken any chance to share his opinions on anything, which struck Natalie as a bit odd, knowing what she did about him so far.

For his part he took a moment to consider -- as if debating whether or not it was really their business -- before he answered. "Yeah. Got a gig tomorrow we weren't expecting to have. I haven't had time to do shit else, between prepping it and work."

"Oh, yeah, then, you've totally missed like four separate digimon attacks," Meghan said, but she found herself thinking pretty hard-- she had an idea she was mulling over in her head.

Xander snorted like a bull, running a hand backwards through his hair. "Swear, it's the last shit I need on my mind right now."  
He stepped away for a moment as they called his order, and he returned a moment later with both his drink and a napkin-wrapped muffin in hand.

"You missed another digimon attack in the time you were away," Natalie said, swirling the half-melted ice and watered-down dregs of her drink at the bottom of her own cup.

Meghan shook her head. "Ain't that just the way?"

Xander snorted again-- they chose to take that as the Xander equivilent of laughter.  
"Look, I gotta get going or they're gonna start riding my ass, and I'm pretty sure Desmon's gonna want this," he said, holding up the muffin.

"I would hate to deprive her of her pastries," Natalie said with a dry smile, and Meghan grinned. Xander snorted for the third time.

"Later."

"Later!"  
They bid him goodbye, and Natalie hummed, while Meghan watched him go.

"You know, he gave me an idea," Natalie said, and Meg snapped her attention back over.

"Huh?" Meghan said, because honestly, she had also got an idea-- but she had the distinct feeling that it wasn't the same idea.

"I should get Raumon a muffin."

 

***

_heeeey :D_

It was past midnight when Xander checked his phone, walking out of Eric's garage with Desmon perching on his shoulder, and he was greeted with a message-- from Meghan, of all people.

"What's up?" Desmon asked, peering down at his phone and twitching her ears as she practically draped herself over Xander's head. (It was late-- nobody was going to care if she stayed out for the distance between Eric's garage and Xander's car.)

"Mind your own damn business," Xander snapped back up at Desmon; she grinned and continued to peer as Xander scrolled through the messages. They were sent earlier in the evening, and he had a hunch that she was probably asleep by now.

 _so i had an idea earlier and i thought i might run it by you!!_  
_your band thing-- do you want pictures? for like publicity stuff and social media_  
_im a photography major and i thought maybe some nice semiprofessional style performance photos would probably be nice for you to have for like self-promotion kind of thing_  
_or i mean you could do silly boy band promo shots too if that's more your style, matching outfits and all :P_  
_(that was a joke)_  
_anyway hit me back with a y/n?_

"Huh," Xander said more to himself than anything as he began to walk to his car.

"Make the text on your screen bigger," Desmon complained, "I can't read from all the way up here."

"Get off of my shoulders, you overweight winged chihuahua."

 

***

"You're going?" Oremon said with vague distaste in his voice as he sat to the side, watching Meghan lace up her most comfortable shoes. Xander had conferred with his band and apparently, the idea had gone over well, judging by the _yeah, sure_ message she woke up to.

It was around six PM now, the doors were at seven, and the music at eight; Xander had shot her a message around five that they were free from sound check hell (his words) and they could get her into the venue at her leisure.

"Well, yeah. It'll be fun!"

"You're not afraid you're going to get, say, knocked over? Have your stuff broken?"

Meg looked over at Oremon and puffed out one cheek in vague annoyance. "It'll be fine, you know." Oremon looked unconvinced, and Meghan rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to be like, down in the pit." Beat. "Well, I _am_ ," name of the venue and all that, "but I mean, I'll be up front for a couple songs, that's it, not staying in the mosh pit or anything." Another beat. "Well, not for extended periods of time, anymore," she said, sticking her tongue out.

Oremon made a grumpy, concerned little bleat, and Meghan reached over and gently bumped her knuckles into his forehead.

"If anyone starts anything, you can pop out and kick their ass. Anyone stupid enough to try and start a fight with a girl with a camera is gonna be so blasted that they probably won't remember that it was a goat that headbutted them in the gut. I come equipped with my own personal bouncer." She grinned.

There was a brief pause while Oremon considered this, and after a moment, he nodded, satisfied.

 

***

Desmon had yet to really get on board with the minimizing _thing_. ("I am no rich woman's lapdog to be carried around in a handbag," she had said, "nor are you a rich woman. Far as I know.") She sat comfortably backstage in a beaten-up, too-small dressing room, sitting on top of a busted amp that had been shoved into the corner.

"When is Will getting back with the food? I'm dyiiiiing," she complained, stretching out her arms above her head and spreading her wings. (Being the youngest, Will had been "volunteered" to be the one to run out and get food.)

"He said he'd be back in like ten minutes," Xander said, seated beside Eric on one of the two moth-eaten couches, flicking through his phone, "and you ate before we got here. You're going to survive."

"She's wasting away, man," Paul said from the other couch, not even looking up from his sketchbook; Xander shot him a dirty look while Desmon grinned.

"See? Everyone can see it!"

" _Don't encourage her._ "

Any further discusson was cut off by knuckles rapping on the door. All three of the humans present made various grunts in a style vaguely indicating _what's up_ or _come in_ , while Desmon slumped backwards and did an impressive impression of a very strange prop.  
(Hey, there was a half-destroyed papier-mache zebra on the other side of the room, she didn't stick out too badly.)

"I come bearing sandwiches," the familiar voice of their bassist drifted through the door, but it wasn't like him to knock.  
The words were followed by a brief pause as he tried and failed to open the door with sandwiches in hand. A moment later the door swung open-- and behind him was a face that was only familiar to Xander. "And a girl with a camera. I assume she's your friend, X?"

"Hiii!" Desmon chirped, and both Meghan and the other members of the band looked surprised-- the former that Desmon was out and about, and the band that she had dropped the inanimate act.  
(Turns out neither party had been expecting the other to be aware of Desmon.)

A round of introductions followed; Meghan made a confused sort of gesture at Desmon, and Xander shrugged, explaining that they -- the band -- had known about her for ages. When the band asked about Meg's nonchalance, Meg practically blue-screened until Xander jumped in with a "she's got one too, turns out it's a _thing_ ", though thankfully didn't go into any more detail than that.

"Don't you keep her minimized?" Meghan asked while the other members of the band were busy handing out the sandwiches that Will had brought.

"Why bother?" Xander asked, sitting back on the couch. "It's not like shit's gonna happen." She looked unconvinced; he snorted. "Anywhere I go where I'm gonna be able to run off and play superhero, she's gonna be with me. I'm not gonna go runnin' off to play with monsters at work or whatever, so why carry her around all the time?"

"I don't know," Meghan admitted, shrugging. "It just feels like..." she trailed off and gestured ineffectually.

"It feels like I've got enough going on," Xander said, resting his elbow on the arm of the couch and his head on his knuckles, "that I don't need to worry more about monster shit."

"And besides," Desmon said cheekily, "staying back here fully materialized while they go prance around on stage like a bunch of frat boys with stupider haircuts means _I_ get to nosh on all their leftovers."

"Oremon thinks it's going to happen regardless of whether we worry about it or not," Meghan said, then paused. "Then again, he's also worrying enough for all of us, I think."

"That's because billy goat gruff is, you know, gruff and all that," Desmon said, grinning.

"If something happens," Xander said, "I'll deal with it when it happens." (Of course, Xander should really get better about not tempting fate.) He huffed, shrugging one shoulder. "Can we cut this? Like, the last damn thing I need on my mind is more monster shit. No offense, or whatever."

"None taken," Meghan said, shrugging right back and rolling immediately with Xander's requested subject change. "So like, what'll probably happen is I'll be down up front for the first couple songs, and I'll back off after that so I don't get trampled..."

 

***

Meghan was fairly certain her hearing might never return to normal, but she was remarkably okay with this.

She had managed to get (what she was pretty sure were going to turn out to be) some great shots over the first couple songs in the set. Between the loud music (which was a lot more-- not _melodic_ , but more _fun sounding_ than she ever kind of expected punk rock to be?) and the energy of the crowd, which was comparatively small but energetic and enthused, the dimly-lit venue seemed a whole lot bigger than it was.  
Turns out, Xander's usual aggression channeled well into the music; for all he could seem prickly and standoffish, he had a distinctive stage presence and a surfeit of energy. This stood in stark contrast to how tired he had seemed offstage-- maybe he had just been saving up his energy to use here?

Well, Meghan thought it was pretty damn cool, is the point, even _if_ she was in no rush to stay up front after she got her pictures, and she had stuck through to [the final song in their set](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLeekX2znNU).

" _There's a stillness in the air, I pray for sound_..."

It was different, sure, but she kind of found herself digging it-- just, you know. Maybe from a safer distance. Towards the back of the concert space was a bit more room to breathe with fewer people packed quite so tightly. So she was seated at a table, taking a cursory look over her shots, but...  
Hm.

Some of them were... behaving oddly. They looked distorted, like somehow the photo data had been corrupted. But how was that possible?  
(Three guesses, and the first two don't count.)

She scrolled through her photos with brow furrowed, but as she was doing so... the lights flickered conspicuously.

" _I hold my breath, did tricks I hoped you wouldn't notice_ \--"

Nobody in the crowd seemed to notice, or thought it was anything to take note of; it was part of the charm of the venue, right? The lights browned out for a half a second, a bit of static rang out over the speakers, and nobody really thought much about it except for maybe a cursory, internal curse for the tech guys.

We should all know by now that it was not just a quirk of the wiring, because they wouldn't be so lucky.

Meghan probably wouldn't have thought twice about it either, but between that, and the photos... Sam had been keeping them up to date on all the photos he could find, and...

She pulled her D-Rive out and, sure as anything, it was active-- and there was a digimon on the radar. (Well within the radar, actually-- it was close enough to make the lights flicker, after all...)  
_Tuskmon. Champion._

It wasn't just heading towards them-- it was almost there. She had been so distracted-- but really, could you blame her?

She didn't have the highest hopes, here. She looked frantically up at the stage as she shoved her camera back into its bag-- Ekko Lokation had just finished the song, the last in their set, and were met with a surprising amount of applause. (Maybe it was just the small venue making it echo? No, no-- the crowd was into it.)  
Meghan, in the back, frantically waved her D-rive in the air and pointed at it, attempting to get Xander's attention. It wasn't a big venue, so it was at least realistically possible.

Up on stage, Xander caught sight of her and squinted. "What?" he hissed to himself, but he quickly cottoned on-- not least of all because he saw the flicker of orange light as Oremon materialized beside her, and the two of them took running for the door before anyone looked twice at them. (It was dark, their attention was on stage, a not-insignificant amount of them were drunk...)

God motherfucking _dammit_ could he have _one goddamn day_.  
(In fairness, he had had _several_ days without digimon shit going on...)

 

***

You know, for something called 'Tuskmon', Meghan had to admit she hadn't expected a dinosaur, but that was the digimon she saw heading her way, only barely more than a block away, when she barrelled out the front door of the venue.  
It was a big green T. rex, a story and a half tall, with pink stripes running down the length of its back. A pair of rhino-like horns adorned its head, and matching spikes ran down its spine from the shoulderblades down-- but from its shoulderblades a pair of large, curled... well, tusks, striped red and black.

So she could see where the _tusk_ came from, but it still wasn't her first thought-- but regardles of what she thought, the big digimon seemed to be in a rather foul mood as it came down the street, looking this way and that-- and with those big tusks and swinging tail, it was causing no small amount of panic and collateral damage as it did.

And here was the thing.  
It was around 8:45 on a Saturday night. They were close to the downtown.

It was kind of a big deal already.

"Crap, crap, crap--" Meghan blurted, looking around frantically. People were pointing, screaming, panicking... she could faintly hear sirens, and she realized a moment too late that they were probably closer than she thought they were, considering how she felt like she was hearing through cotton balls.

Oremon practically pushed past her, and Tuskmon's vivid-purple eyes settled on the goat that was suddenly heading his way.

"Bayonet Lancer!" it roared, and the larger horn on its face began to glow. It released a javelin-like blast of energy, headed right for Oremon. Oremon snorted and leapt out of the way, not stopping his charge-- the attack smashed into the street and cracked the concrete, but better it hit that than Oremon.

"Iron Head!" Oremon yelled, bowing his head down as he prepared to headbutt him-- but Tuskmon didn't seem to care much for Oremon's aspirations.  
As Oremon drew closer, Tuskmon reared down and hooked Oremon on the long curved tusks and tossed him aside effortlessly; a young man dove out of the way to avoid being collided by the discarded goat, and yes, he did do a double-take over the fact that a giant angry dinosaur just threw a bipedal goat at him. As you do.

But that was the thing-- Tuskmon didn't seem particularly interested in following up on that. It seemed content to throw Oremon aside and continue its trudge down the street, swinging its tail and coming dangerously close to smashing said tail into windows and street lamps.

Meghan had to make a decision, and quickly, whether it was more important to help Oremon, or to pretend she wasn't involved to avoid suspicion.

So anyway, that's a stupid question.

"Oremon!" she cried, rushing towards her partner, who was already getting up with no great abundance of dignity. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, gritting his teeth, and before Meghan could tell him otherwise, he launched himself forward.

"Oh, you idiot," she muttered to herself, feeling quite helpless-- but of course, as Oremon ran towards Tuskmon's back...

"Oremon, drive evolve to... Ibexmon!"  
To his credit, he didn't recklessly charge at Tuskmon; he merely snorted as he went from running at a full sprint as Oremon to a confident not-quite trot as Ibexmon as Tuskmon realized something was going on behind it, and it turned around. As it turned, its tail swung in an arc, and bystanders had to jump out of the way.

Once Tuskmon had turned, Ibexmon snorted.

"Headstrong Charge!" he yelled, rearing down and rushing forward.

"Horn Driver!" Tuskmon reared down in turn, locking its curved tusks with Ibexmon's horns.

"What the _fuck_ did I miss?" Xander's voice brought Meghan back to reality. He had been jogging up to her when he had called to her, and came to a stop as she turned, and Meghan gestured at Tuskmon, practically playing tug of war with Ibexmon's horns.  
She really didn't think she needed to explain further.

 

"Well, shit," Xander said, flat tone belying the irritated twitch of his eye.  
Unbidden, a burst of blue light materialized into Desmon -- Xander had, Meg realized, had to run backstage, minimize her, and make his way back out. He had moved with impressive speed, really, considering he had had to drop literally any other concerns he had.

"Come on, let's kick some ass!" Desmon chirped the moment she formed, kicking into the air and flapping. She looked expectantly at her partner, impatience on her face.

"We need to get it away from here," Xander said, sharp and decisive. Meghan nodded-- there were a bunch of people in there, and if something went wrong out here on the street...

"Got it!" Desmon said, grinning. She threw before she flapped her way over to where Ibexmon and Tuskmon were locked in horn combat. "Hey! Big, green, and ugly! Black Static!"

The rings of energy hit Tuskmon straight in the face, which caused it to roar and pull away from Ibexmon to look at the new, small annoyance. Its pupils constricted and it snorted out a humid, rotten-smelling breath.

"Oremon! I mean-- Ibexmon!" Meghan said, cupping her hands around her mouth-- as she ran towards him. "We need to--!"

"Get it away from here, right" Ibexmon said with a nod. "Get on my back." When Meghan looked confused, "Can't fight it here, and I'm not going to just abandon you here to fight it somewhere else. Get on my back."

"Bayonet Lancer!" Tuskmon yelled for the second time; Desmon squeaked, practically divebombing out of the air to avoid the spear of energy. It smashed straight into the building opposite the venue that they had just come out of-- a shop that was, thankfully, not open, so all of the damage was to the property.  
(Look, there's a sliding scale of things to be thankful for.)

As Meghan clambered onto Ibexmon's back with the time Desmon's distraction afforded them, Desmon herself dropped down next to Xander, and began to glow.

"Desmon, drive evolve to... Corymon!"

Xander didn't need special instructions-- he climbed onto Corymon's back the moment she had fully formed, and she kicked into the air. Ibexmon took off down the street, with Tuskmon focused on giving chase. Luckily, pretty much everyone gave a wide berth.  
Meghan yelped, clutching the strap of her camera bag tightly with one hand and hanging onto Ibexmon's mane with the other.

"Come on, you overgrown gecko!" Corymon taunted, waving her scorpion-like tail like someone would wave string in front of a cat.

Xander disagreed with her course of action, and made his opinion clear.  
"Hey, dumbass! Don't taunt it while I'm _on your back!"_

Luckily, it didn't seem to pay attention -- it was more interested in Ibexmon.

"Find somewhere to take it," Xander said to Corymon, looking around. "Somewhere where there's fewer people and more room to maneuver, or failing that, at least one of those."

To her credit, Corymon was already looking by the time Xander said as such. "There's an empty-ish parking lot close to here!" Corymon yelled down to Ibexmon. "Follow me!"

"Easier said than done," Ibexmon muttered, casting a sidelong glance over his shoulder -- careful not to disturb Meghan, best he could. Tuskmon's turning radius was wide, and to minimize damage while leading it around a turn would be... interesting, but what choice did they have?  
As he looked back forward, he saw Corymon pull ahead, leading the way.

As they swung around the first turn, Tuskmon took out a stop sign and took a chunk out of the corner of a building with the swing of its tail.

 

***

By the time Ibexmon had turned the final corner, he could see Corymon already landing in the lot to let her passenger off before kicking back into the air, preparing to fight.  
The big dinosaur didn't seem too intelligent or interested in anything other than chasing the other digimon, so the screams of people and the distant police sirens didn't seem to affect it much. Whether that was a curse or a blessing was really up for debate. Luckily, the further they went, the fewer people they ran into-- which said nothing of people following them, but, you know.

"Black Stinger!" Corymon yelled as Ibexmon bounded into the lot, firing off three rapid-fire shots from her tail's stinger.

Ibexmon was about to be angry, and he snarled that Corymon was antagonizing the dinosaur currently chasing him, but he realized after a half a beat-- she was distracting it once again, so that Meghan could get off his back.  
She did, with great rapidity, and Ibexmon turned to face the hostile digimon.

Tuskmon, for its part, roared so loudly that it felt like its voice shook the earth beneath their feet-- which was just as well that their hearing was already kind of shot!

"Hurricane Blitz!" Corymon said, taking advantage of her newfound freedom to rush at her foe without fearing she'd smash into any innocent bystanders. Wind whipped around her and she swooped at Tuskmon, pulling back at the last second and leaving the wind sphere to continue on its path, smashing into Tuskmon head-on.

Grinning cockily, Corymon failed to move far enough away in time. "Horn Buster!" Tuskmon yelled, its horns glowing as it rushed at her, catching the bat with a nice sharp jab. She cried out, dropping to the ground. She wasn't _terribly_ hurt, but hey, you try taking a horn to the stomach and see how not-winded _you_ are, huh?

"Terra Spear!" Ibexmon yelled, rearing back and slamming his front hooves down hard. The cracks from where his hooves impacted rushed along to underneath Tuskmon's feet, and sharp spikes of rock shot out of the ground to strike it, giving it a taste of its own very sharp medicine.

Tuskmon did not seem terribly amused by this. It roared again, looking between Ibexmon and Corymon, as if it were trying to decide which one to go for first, but while it was undecided--

"Headstrong Charge!" Ibexmon cried, bowing his head down. Once again, Tuskmon reared down and locked horn with tusk, growling low.

This time, though, that was what Ibexmon was trying to do, and Corymon picked up on it, lifting up into the air to get some distance between herself and the dinosaur.

"Hurricane Blitz!" she yelled again, and once more, wind swirled around her. She swooped and pulled out of her dive at the last second.

In that last split second before the sphere of wind hit Tuskmon, Ibexmon gave an almighty toss of his head-- enough to unlock his horns from Tuskmon's, uh, tusks, and pull away so that he wouldn't be caught in the crossfire.

Tuskmon roared in pain, and Meghan and Xander could see it begin to shift and pixellate-- just slightly. Not enough to fully commit.

"One more hit!" Xander yelled up at his partner.

As Corymon circled back around, preparing to attack again, Tuskmon took initiative.

"Panzer Knuckle!" it roared, its fist engulfing in fire as it rushed at Ibexmon.

"Headstrong Charge!" Ibexmon once more rushed at Tuskmon. This time, Tuskmon wasn't rearing down, and didn't catch its tusks on Ibexmon's horns. Ibexmon smashed straight into Tuskmon's abdomen, and that was enough to tip it over the edge. In a flash, Tuskmon pixellated and broke apart into glowing little data particles.

The little pixels rushed into Xander and Meghan's D-Rives, and without the heavy breathing and angry vocalizations of a dinosaur, they were left -- as Peter and Sam had been days before -- to enjoy the distant sounds of the panic they had left behind.

Either Meghan's hearing was starting to come back, or the sirens were coming closer.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Corymon said as she alighted, grinning. Xander rolled his eyes and muttered something about _idiot_.

"You're alright?" Ibexmon asked as he crossed over to Meghan, and she paused, before reaching over and bumping him in the middle of his skull-plated forehead with her knuckles.

"At least we got it away from the concert hall?" Meghan said, looking over at Xander as Ibexmon started to de-digivolve back down to his rookie level.

Xander grunted and shrugged. "Yeah. Swear to fuck, though, can't believe I had to tap out like that, unprofessional as shit..." he shoved his hands into his pockets, checking his phone.

"Better than letting a dinosaur crash the party," Corymon said, just moments before she devolved back down to Desmon. Xander shrugged one shoulder in vague agreement and flicked through his texts.

 _where the hell you go?_ from Eric; the next, _you're missing the main attraction dude_ from Will.

"They don't have a damn clue what's going on inside," he concluded, looking back over at Meghan.

"The power of loud music?" Meghan offered with a hopeless shrug, and then she paused. "... _shit_! Half of my photos got messed up!"

"What?" Xander asked, blinking.

"When I was-- because the digimon was nearby, I think, it messed with my camera?" she said, gesturing hopelessly, and Xander blinked before he put two and two togther.

"I wonder why that is," Xander muttered, looking over at Desmon and Oremon. "S'not like these assholes screw with our shit..." Oremon seemed unamused with the term of address. Desmon put on her best shit-eating grin.

"I hope I still have enough good ones," Meghan muttered, frowning as she pulled her camera out of its bag and starting to scroll through her photos again.

Xander looked back over at her for a moment; she made a kind of dejected groaning noise.  
"At least I didn't have anything else on here..."

Xander rubbed the back of his head. "If you don't have any good ones, you could come to the next show we play."

Meghan was about to respond, and Desmon looked prepared to open her mouth to commentate, when they as a unit were distracted.  
"Good job!" a familiar voice chirped, making all four of them jump.

Ratamon was perched up on the top of a utility pole, his eyes shining bright as stars in the fading light. How long had he been there? ... Actually, come to think, it had been a little while since he had turned up-- at least, in any way that they had seen him. (He'd been around.)

"Oh, look," Desmon said, "it's the Greek chorus pudding!" Oremon frowned and folded his arms.

"Caused a little bit of damage, but it looks like it's mostly cosmetic," Ratamon said, peering around before jumping down off of the pole. His little wings flapped frantically to slow his descent, and he practically bounced when he hit the ground again. "Good job, though! You're getting better!"

"How the hell do you keep knowing where we are?" Xander said without a moment of preamble, raising an eyebrow.

Ratamon blinked owlishly up at Xander. "Well, there's only so many digimon with humans," he said, which answered nothing, "so when something goes wrong, I'm going to assume it's happening around one of you!"

They couldn't place why, but they felt kind of... insulted.

"Right," Xander said slowly, and judging by the look on his face he was at least faintly contemplating murder.

Meghan, though, hummed in thought. "How do the digimon causing trouble know where we are, though?" she said, more to herself than to Ratamon.

"That one?" Ratamon said, looking at where Tuskmon had been not long ago. "I think he was just feral. He probably came through by accident! That's been happening more, you know. I'd be more worried about the ones with an agenda, myself, but whatever suits you, suits you."

The ones with an agenda-- they couldn't help but think of what Sam and Peter had said they had heard from Strigimon. But... coming through? By accident, even?

"What do you mean coming through?" Meghan asked, though she was becoming steadily more aware that they had less and less time to dawdle.

"Oh, from the Digital World!" Ratamon said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "There's more cracks now than there used to be. It's not doing so great right now, honestly, I don't really _blame_ them for brute forcing their way through without a plan..."

The flashing of red and blue lights turning a corner announced that they really didn't have the affordances to continue this conversation. Ratamon seemed to agree, and without warning he bounded over to the pole he had jumped down from.

"I'll see you around!" he chirped, cheerful and smiling over his shoulder before he skittered up.

"God motherfucking dammit," Xander hissed, pulling out his D-Rive and minimizing Desmon. Meghan followed suit, and she sighed, watching as Ratamon took off like a little white bolt of lightning.

"Let's get back to where we started," Meghan said, gesturing in the direction they had come from. It was a few blocks away, but without the threat of being chased by a giant angry dinosaur, it wasn't too imperative to move super fast.

Xander sighed, looking at his D-Rive. He was going to have to start keeping Desmon on-hand more regularly now, wasn't he?  
Damn.

"I'll take a look at the pictures I got that didn't get messed up," Meghan said as she began to walk, "but I'm totally down to come to you guys' next concert."

 

***

It was hardly ten minutes later that a young man ran into the parking lot that not even a half an hour ago had been the site of the scuffle; the police had moved right along from the empty parking lot, in search of the perpetrators. Nobody stopped him, nobody even questioned his being there.

"Damn," this young man huffed, stopping to catch his breath. He looked around; there were scuff marks in the pavement and a busted stop sign down the street, but not a thing that he was looking for. He pulled out his phone and fired off a quick text:  
_missed it_

 _again?_ came back in no time flat.

 _hey come on it's not like we've had better luck_ a second responder chimed in. _its like every other one we miss out on_

_fair nuff i guess_

He sighed and pocketed his phone, and pulled out another little electronic device. With a little feathered wing charm hanging from the end, with a white back and a red faceplate...  
Well. No prizes for guessing what it was. He turned it on and flicked to the radar screen, and he was met with nothing but the dot in the center of his radar, shaped like his partner's head.

"Every time," he said to himself, shaking his head. Now, don't get him wrong, he wasn't objecting to the fact that when digimon were running around causing trouble, it got more or less taken care of before he or his friends could respond, but... maybe taken care of was the wrong term? After all...

Well. It was complicated, but Shitomon had been right so far, and he had no reason to believe she would be wrong now.

 

***

Later that night, the city had quieted down somewhat-- as cities tend to do around 1 AM.  
Ratamon sighed, flicking his tail. He was perched on top of a building, looking around.

This had all gotten more complicated than he had been anticipating.

The more digimon that were breaking through, the harder his job got-- the more he had to worry about the digimon and their humans making a mistake, or getting caught for real. On the other hand, he supposed there was at least a little bit of a silver lining. The more incidents, the greater the chance that the ones who were laying low would finally show their faces. And that went for all of them-- not just the one he really wanted to find.

...  
Or, alternatively, the incidents could end _super_ badly, in part because of those outliers.

... either way!

The Digital World had been cut off for long enough, and the sooner that he found the last one, the sooner they could get this ball rolling.


	9. Episode 09: Radio Static

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more tiiiime.
> 
> Because I got requests for it, the contest has had its deadline pushed back to July 15th-- I can't push it back any further than that, but hey! Check out the site (as always, recon.digimonreset.com) for details, as well as profiles-- because whoop de doo, we've got new ones yet again.
> 
> AND AWAAAAY WE GO.

"It's too hot," Raumon complained, laying spread eagle in the middle of Natalie's living room floor where the air was coolest.

"You weenie," Gelermon said, safe from her spot right in front of the fan and a smug smirk on her face.

"All my feathers are black," Raumon protested, "and your fur's mostly white. I don't reflect as much heat."

Natalie was holding down the fort while the rest of her family were out of town for the next couple days, and she, of course, used this opportunity to throw a WILD PARTY. 'Wild party' meant she invited over the rest of _the squad_ , if they wanted, to come chill. To her surprise (and relief) all of them had agreed. Peter had showed up a bit late, having gotten off work, but this might have been for the better-- it gave him and Xander less time to get on each other's nerves.   
July had just begun, and it wasn't just warm-- it was straight up _hot_ , even as the afternoon gave way to the early evening. An oppressive humidity hung in the air, which meant that nobody was eager to hang out outside.

"Girls, girls, you're both pretty. Or both overheating, whichever," Desmon said from her comfortable perch on the back of an easy chair. Gelermon rolled her eyes; Raumon lifted his head and for a moment looked like he was going to offer a rebuttal, but he decided it wasn't worth it and flopped his head back down.

The humans were sitting on the floor, smack in the middle of a particularly vulgar party card game (you know the one)-- Peter had been so kind as to provide the physical copy of the game.   
Banmon was curled underneath the side table, watching the happenings around her-- and hiding from the fan, which was on full blast, and she didn't like having her bandages whipped around by the air. Oremon was laying across the couch, arms behind his head and eyes closed. He wasn't asleep, and he still snorted grumpily when anyone poked him, but for the most part, he was content to listen.

The past couple weeks had been... well, let's say they had been good for team-building. This little meetup provided, Natalie thought, a pretty good point of reference; this was the first time since the Kabuterimon incident that all five (ten) of them had all been in the same place at the same time. Compared to then, the tone was so much more casual and comfortable, it was almost ridiculous.

For one, they had actually kind of graduated to a group of... friends? Not like they were rushing to call each other besties or anything, and their digimon tended to stay practically joined at the hip with their respective humans, but still, progress was progress, right? Right. Especially when them getting used to each other and willing to work together was doubly important-- digimon had not stopped rearing their ugly heads.

To recap:

There had been a phoenix called a Birdramon that Xander had refused, point blank, to have anything to do with ( _No, not again, no more kentucky fried_ goddamn _chickens, I dealt with the goth version, this is on you_ ), leaving Doctorimon to find a way to handle it without being able to fly up to its level, much to the plague doctor's chagrin. Frekimon, meanwhile, had had to deal with another bird, this one a giant chicken named Kokatorimon-- ground-bound, yes, but also able to petrify the wolf digimon in her tracks, and a late-arrival save from Banshemon had been the edge she had needed. Ibexmon had taken care of a feral digimon that had been rampaging towards the downtown; it had confusingly named Moosemon, despite its clearly being an elk, and Corymon had helped take down an enormous red beetle named Kuwagamon, even though she complained afterwards about how loud its buzzing wings had been.

There were a couple more, evening out to one or two a week; and, sure, we could likely go into detail on these-- but ultimately, they didn't gain any more insight than they had. Strigimon's tendency to go on had been an outlier, not a regular thing, and Ratamon was as slippery as ever. They saw him around now and then -- he would pop his head in when a digimon incident happened, as if just to check in and say hi, but nobody had had the chance to press him for information.

They had gone over what they knew time and time again, but without more information, they were running circles. The extent of what they knew -- or guessed at any rate, was this:   
There was another world, if Ratamon was to be believed; it 'had seen better days', and was where Digimon were from. Alright, on board with that-- though the digimon, try as they might, couldn't remember anything before meeting their human friends, they had all conceded that this sounded more or less acceptable. The humans were still struggling with the reality of the idea, but it wasn't a _new_ idea. After all, they all had their theories for their talking, shape-shifting monster friends. Moreover, Strigimon had mentioned _refugees_ \-- so they supposed that maybe their friends had escaped the not so great state of the world?

But that didn't explain Ratamon's "cracks", or what Strigimon had meant by her lofty claims of glory. It didn't explain the D-Rives at all, which infuriated Sam in particular to absolutely no end. It didn't explain what the Digital World was, or what state it was in, and most of the digimon they had dealt in the interrim hadn't been overflowing with information-- or at least, information that they were willing to share. Most of them had been either feral, or repeated the same monosyllabic _found you_ shtick as most of their fellows.

The trend of digimon being nigh-impossible to catch on camera clearly had also continued, which was a great source of consternation for the news stations and various internet commentators. Sam had put forth the idea that maybe emergent digimon -- as he called them, a term which the others had absorbed through osmosis -- interfered with electronics in some way, but he couldn't figure _how_.

("What makes you think that?" Natalie had asked when Sam had proposed it.

"Mostly the fact that out of all of my total bullshit guesses, that one felt like it made the most sense," had been Sam's reluctant reply.)

In their own ways, they all had the distinct feeling that there were going to be significantly more questions than answers in the forseeable future. For now, all they could do was keep feral digimon from causing havoc, and protect themselves and each other when digimon with an agenda came knocking.   
... and maybe get a round or two of a party game in here and there.

"'We're sorry, but the department of _blank_ has rejected your request for _blank_ ," Meghan read off of the prompt card, before pausing. "... who played 'homeless people' and 'turning homeless people into wifi hotspots'?"

"They saw the opportunity, and they took it," Peter said, stroking his chin.

Natalie grinned. It had been her play.   
(She won the round.)

 

***

It was a bit later on in the night; the sun had started to go down, making things less heinously hot, and they had had a truly disgusting amount of Chinese takeout delivered. With the temperature coming down to tolerable levels, they had migrated up to the roof of the building, as it was a bit less cramped for five people and five digimon. Though they briefly considered digging out the motley collection of lawn chairs, they as a group decided it wasn't worth the effort, and were generally content to sit on the roof as it was.

The humans were engaged in a truly fascinating, horrible discussion, and the digimon could only sit by and watch in awe as they ate their own food.

"All I'm saying is that the reason nobody goes swimming in lakes," Natalie was in the middle of asserting, gesturing with her chopsticks, "is at least 75% the fact that nobody wants to risk finding a dead body someone dumped there."

"Finding a dead body is just a risk we all have to take sometimes," Peter said, in such a flat and matter of fact tone that it was difficult to tell whether or not he was joking-- but then again, that was how he said _everything_.

"Okay wow," Sam said in the ensuing beat of silence, right before Peter smirked, shrugged one shoulder, and resumed eating.

Xander, however, had a different take, which he used to pick up the conversation. "No, the reason nobody goes swimming in lakes has nothing to do with dead bodies, it's just that lakes are fucking gross."

"Partially because of all the dead bodies," Sam interjected; Xander rolled his eyes, and Gelermon, to the side, snickered loudly.

"I thought they sank people in the river, not lakes?" Meghan said, tapping her chin in thought, and then paused for a beat. "Or was that a country song...?"

"The point is that natural bodies of water are full of corpses," Natalie concluded decisively, nodding sagely, and there was a moment of silence as they considered this.

And then Meghan said, "what about the ocean?"

"Humans have the weirdest conversations," Oremon muttered, still struggling with chopsticks but his pride demanding he not give in and use a fork, no matter _how_ many times Meghan suggested he try another utensil.

For all it was a... _fascinating_ conversation, though, Raumon took something else out of it as he watched the humans (particularly Natalie) discuss the pros and cons of dumping bodies in the ocean as they sat up here on the roof where, from his and Nat's perspective, all of this had really started.

If he was being honest -- and he never had intents of being otherwise, of course -- he was kind of surprised at how much _better_ Natalie's mood had been since all of this started with the start of summer break. Sure, some of it had just been that immediately before all of this, finals had been eating her soul, as finals tend to do, but that hadn't been all of it.

It didn't _start_ in December, when Raumon's gut feeling about Natalie's then-boyfriend had proved correct, but that certainly had put a bad spin on the entire spring semester. She had already been feeling stressed out, Raumon knew, with the expectations her parents were placing on her--

(Which Raumon, frankly, thought were _stupid,_ even if he wouldn't be so bold as to say so to their faces. Nat's grades were _fine_ as far as he knew, just because she wasn't pulling straight-As without effort like she had in highschool and the first part of her freshman year didn't mean she was in some kind of crisis--)

And it was certainly a curious fact that, once the dust had settled, it almost felt like all of this had been the best mood booster she'd had in years.

Raumon was sure there was something to be said about that, but he couldn't place _what_. No doubt at least a part of it was the having people she could invite over without Raumon having to hide in the bedroom, or worse, closet.   
...   
No lie, he appreciated this, too, even _if_ this was questionable dinner conversation.

So caught up was he in this train of thought that he didn't notice Desmon sloooooowly reaching over to steal one his crab puffs.

"... the ocean is literally the world's largest cemetery," Sam said, because this conversation was still happening for some godforsaken reason.

"No, because it has a lot of animals that do cleanup," Meghan reasoned.

Sam shook his head. "Doesn't mean there's not dead bodies."

"Yes it does," Xander said, "because they eat the bodies, and there's not a cemetery without bodies. Supposing for a second that there _are_ bodies in lakes, lakes would be worse."

Peter, having a practical biological imperative to contradict Xander, cut in: "What, do the animals in lakes not eat bodies?"

"The only animals in lakes are, like, sad fish," said Meghan.

"Alligators?" Sam suggested.

"We live in the pacific northwest," Xander said.

Sam shrugged. "You didn't say it had to be local lakes."

Natalie rejoined: "Moose, then."

"Moose don't live in lakes, though?" Meghan said, furrowing her brow.

"Are you really willing to take that risk?" Natalie's tone was as serious as a heart attack, but the grin on her face belied her amusement.

 

***

After everyone had cleared out of Natalie's home, with only empty takeout containers left in memoriam, Raumon was helping Natalie to clean up. It wasn't _late_ late, 11:30 at the worst, but three out of four visiting humans had work the next day. (When asked, Sam shrugged and said he had nowhere to be -- like, ever -- but he felt weird creeping around someone else's place for too long, so he took his leave when everyone else did.)

"I'd say that went pretty well," Raumon prompted as he finished tying off a garbage bag that almost felt bigger than he was.

"Universe: five billion and three," Natalie said with no small amount of irony in her voice, "Natalie: one."

"Well, it's a start," Raumon said.

"Damn straight it is," she said, nodding with a smile.

 

***

The next day, early in the afternoon, Natalie's phone went off with message notifications. She didn't immediately notice it, as she was smack in the middle of a nervous-energy-fueled cleaning of her room, but luckily, Raumon was on-hand to notice when the phone's vibrations rattled against the wood of the nightstand.

When she unlocked her phone, she was greeted with a trio of messages from Sam.

_hey_   
_emergent on my radar. looks like it heading southwest-ish? that general direction_   
_im heading after it. will have it under control but if you want to make a guest appearance feel free_

That was as good as an outright invitation, coming from them. (She could practically hear Gelermon, in her head, objecting to the idea of them needing help, and Sam completely ignoring her.)

"I'm guessing," Raumon said, watching her expression as she read the messages and cutting through her thoughts, "that it's a digimon?"

"Am I that easy to read?" Natalie said, putting her free hand akimbo.

"Just a little," Raumon said with a cheerful shrug. He took the liberty of grabbing Natalie's D-Rive off of her nightstand and tossed it to her. She caught it and stuck her tongue out at him. He pulled a face right back, and Natalie rolled her eyes.

Before this stupid-face-making exchange could escalate, she minimized Raumon into her D-Rive, and then shifted her attention over to her phone.   
_on it,_ she messaged Sam back as she grabbed her keys off the hook, grabbed her bag, and was out the door.

 

***

Raumon, who re-emerged and generously offered his services as navigator once they were safely in Natalie's car, alerted Nat as soon as the D-Rive lit up and a dot appeared on the radar. It took a moment for Raumon to get the info box to pop up, since the D-Rive's touch screen wasn't really calibrated to work with his claws, but with a little bit of forcing he was able to read it off:   
Snimon, champion level.

Before it got _too_ close, though, it stopped moving. This wasn't too surprising; they hadn't expected it to full on stop conveniently in, say, the park, just to make their lives easier.

He did not, however, notice an important detail: there was now a second dot on the radar, almost completely overlapped with Snimon's.

 

***

They had tried their best to drag this darn thing somewhere it wouldn't cause too much damage; judging by the giant slashes torn in the chain-link fence and the _blade marks_ on all the concrete, they had made a wise decision.

Here, underneath this overpass, among the scrubby grass and the mud, was as close to a _safe_ location as they were going to get.

"Shitomon! Watch out!" the young man yelled to his digimon partner before casting a look around to make sure that nobody else was around.

Shitomon was an odd little digimon, to be sure. She most resembled a rabbit-- a very, very strange rabbit -- but far stranger than _her_ was the fact that she was fighting a giant praying mantis with scythes for arms.

"Twin Sickles!" the mantis -- Snimon -- yelled, slashing its blades through the air and releasing a pair of pink, crescent-shaped blades of energy that flew right towards the little digimon.

Shitomon yelped as she leapt out of the way, flaring her wing-like ears out to catch the air. As she drifted back down, she called an attack:   
"Light Shot!" Light swirled around her open mouth, gathering into a little sphere, which she then spat out at Snimon. It hit the big bug with about as much impact as a rotten tomato.   
As her feet touched the ground again, she whipped around to look at her human partner. "No good! Mind giving me a hand?"

"Slamming Attack!"

"Eep!" Shitomon yelped as Snimon decided to get a bit more physical, rushing at her blades-first. Shitomon leapt to the side, leaving Snimon to slash at the ground instead, kicking up a cloud of dirt and grass. "Now'd be a good time, Ryan!"

Ryan nodded resolutely, holding up his red D-Rive as it began to glow.

 

***

Sam had arrived first; he had parked in a dead-end street nearby, and was just checking his radar when Natalie came jogging around the corner. He hailed her over with a hand wave, and inclined his head. Their radars had led them to an underpass next to a storage facility, and between them and the digimon in question was a chain link fence reinforced with black canvas that had been vandalized extensively. This served to block their view entirely, which, paired with the sound of cars on the overpass, made it difficult to get a read on what was happening.

"I figured you'd come," he said as soon as Natalie came close enough to be heard.

"Not like I'm doing anything else," Natalie said with a one-shouldered shrug, but she grinned lopsidedly.

"Story of my life," Sam muttered. "I was just trying to find a way to get through," he said, jerking a thumb at the obstruction in question.

"I mean, we could just hop the fence," Natalie suggested, utterly nonchalantly. ... it sounded like this wasn't the first time she'd done such a thing, and Sam was about to ask a series of fascinating questions, but he opted out of it when she continued, "but that might not go over so well."

"Yeah, no, call it a hunch," Sam said, shaking his head. "We could go around it, or--" he stopped mid-sentence as he noticed something a little ways down from them.   
"Well," he said, "if I was doubting if it was here, I'm not anymore."   
See, what he had seen was a huge gash torn in the chain-link and the canvas-- like something had torn straight through it, almost bizarrely cleanly, carving out a decent-sized chunk of fence.

"I wonder why on earth it stopped here...?" Natalie muttered, walking over to where it had ripped the fence and peering through, but her field of view was woefully limited by the obstruction of a large concrete pillar and the limited angle.

Sam huffed a not-quite laugh as he followed her over. "Wouldn't I like to know."

"One way to find out?" Natalie grinned, gesturing in an _after you_ motion.

"The things this digimon bullshit has led me to," Sam mumbled as he ducked down to slip through the hole in the fence, woefully aware that they were basically going in blind here.   
Once inside, though, they got quite an eyeful-- they hadn't just walked in on the digimon, they had walked in on a full-fledged fight.

It was hard to follow what was going on-- a big tan digimon was fighting a big green one; the first one seemed to have feathery wings, or maybe they were ears, or maybe they were hands? It was _really_ hard to get a good look at it, between the obstructions and the shadows. But the green one-- the green one was a bug, and had no hands at all, but giant scythe-blades in place of its forearms. That was hard to miss.

"Fuck!" Sam hissed, stumbling backwards into the fence and nearly crashing into Natalie.

"Twin Sickles!" the bug yelled, slashing its blades through the air. A pair of crescent-shaped energy blades, bright pink in colour, flew at the tan one.

"Holy Charge!" the tan one yelled right back, and its entire body was surrounded by a blinding white light, making it even harder to make out the details. It threw itself at the bug-- the pink blades of energy dissipated harmlessly against its body as it rushed its enemy, and the light exploded when it made contact.

The big green bug roared as it began to pixellate, and in a familiar sight indeed, it burst into motes of light, leaving only the strange, strange tan digimon standing there.   
And then--

And then _that_ digimon was consumed by red-tinted light as a young man's voice yelled something indistinct-- Sam couldn't quite make out the words, but he was transfixed as the big tan digimon turned into a smaller one. In a moment's notice, there stood a little tan rabbit of sorts, with ears so long they dragged on the ground and a red scarf around its neck.

With it no longer in the way, they could see that opposite them, among the wrecked concrete and scrubby grass, was was a young man. He looked more or less around their age; he was tallish and blonde, with a scruffy soul patch on his chin and sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead. His tanktop showed off the faux-tribal tattoo that took up a good half of his left shoulder and upper arm, and held tightly in his hand was an unmistakable little device.

The first word that leapt to Sam's mind was _douchey_ , but admittedly, he may have been biased.

The stranger had a deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face as he looked at Sam-- one they knew well from wearing it more than once. It was the _oh god, how much did you see?_ expression.

The little digimon didn't notice its audience at first. It was looking at the young man and making to walk towards him, before it looked where he was looking, and it froze in place. It stood in awkward stillness for a few seconds, until it vanished in a burst of red light, minimized into the stranger's D-Rive.

Sam's mind was already on fire with possibilities, with theories, with _what the fuck_ \-- but a larger part of him considered retreating through the fence and pretending he hadn't seen anything. As he slipped his D-Rive into his pocket, Natalie beside him surreptitiously tucked hers into her bag.

"It _can't_ be," Natalie muttered to herself, a creeping sense of dread in her voice.

"Hey-- uh--" the new young man said, holding up his hands in an _I can explain_ sort of gesture, before he paused and the unmistakable look of recognition dawned on him. "Nat?" he asked, disbelief in his voice, but the kind of disbelief that comes from a vaguely unpleasant surprise.

Behind him, Sam heard Natalie made a muffled noise that he could swear would have been a scream if she had opened her mouth the slightest bit, but instead just kind of came out like a disgruntled _MMMM._ If Natalie's apparently good mood had been nixed any harder, it would have made a whooshing noise as it went.

Sam got the sinking feeling that he was missing something.

What else was new?

The young man half-jogged over to them, and Sam took a half-step backwards, but Natalie stood shock-still as if rooted in place.   
"Hiiii, Ryan," she said, the tone of her voice indicating that she could think of at least 200 places she'd rather be right now, and at least one of those places was _neck deep in spiders_. (She sounded like she'd rather be anywhere else, that is to say.)

Ryan, now that he was at closer range, once again held up his hands in the same gesture as before. "See, I know what you're thinking, but there is a perfectly logical explanation--"

" _That_ sounds familiar," Natalie muttered under her breath, but put on a brave face. Luckily, Ryan didn't seem to hear her.

"So if you could try not losing your mind for three seconds, then I can--" Ryan said, but Natalie didn't wait for him to finish saying he'd explain, let alone actually let him explain.

"Actually, we were-- in a hurry," Natalie said, coming up with a weak explanation on the spot. "Thought cutting through here might be a time-saver, but we don't really have the time to spare."

(If she hadn't come up with an exucse, Sam was going to, because he had no intention of telling this guy that they were in the same monster-filled boat... though Sam realized, after a moment of thought, that he'd have thought Natalie _would_ be the type to see someone else with a Digimon and a D-Rive and try to bring them into the fold, if her treatment of him when they had first met had been any indication There was clearly something at play here.)

"So we've really got to be on our way, sorry, have to have you explain it to me later," she continued, turning on her heel and crouching back down to go through the fence from whence they had come. She had barely stopped to breathe, let alone let this guy get a word in edgewise.   
Sam blinked a couple times, looked Ryan up and down, and said nothing as he turned and followed suit with Natalie.

From behind them, Ryan didn't bother lowering his voice as he muttered to himself: "Why are women so fucking crazy, I _swear_."   
Sam could almost feel how much Natalie wanted to swing around, run back, and deck him; he admired her self-control.

"So, uh," he said, after they retreated back through the fence and were safely on the other side -- in fact, he waited until they were most of the way back across the street to ask, "what was that about?" Natalie _would_ have answered, but she was smack in the middle of trying to process this, and Sam's speaking up seemed to be the impetus for the dam to break.

"What the _hell_!" Natalie blurted, digging her fingers into her hair as she walked ahead of Sam. "I can't believe _he_ \-- when the hell did that happen!?"

"I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess that you know Douchebag McShades back there?"

Instead of replying, Natalie channelled all of her energy into kicking a crumpled beer can that someone had littered on the ground, sending it flying with surprising force. It clattered into a wall, and Natalie seethed for a moment, before she relaxed -- at least, partially -- with a heavy sigh.

"Yes, I know him," Natalie said, and Sam wasn't surprised. "I'd much rather _not_ , but what can you do?" Seeing Sam's still confused face, she groaned and ran a hand backwards through her hair. "We used to date and it didn't end well and _why does he have a digimon_."

Sam mouthed a long _ohhhhhh_. He was about to ask further questions, but it was at this moment that Raumon, unbidden, materialized out of Natalie's D-Rive. It seemed he couldn't keep his commentary in any longer, and he was positively bubbling over with things to say.

" _HE_ HAS A DIGIMON!?" Raumon yelled, his voice taking on a slightly squawky, cracking quality that would have been hilarious if his anger weren't so apparent. " _HIM_? The _clown prince of douchebaggery_?!"

 

Sam suddenly felt distinctly glad that his borderline-hermit ways had precluded relationship drama, and relationships in general, but he felt it might be a bad idea to express this thought right now. He cast a look over his shoulder, back towards the overpass, and sighed.   
"Something about this doesn't feel right."

Natalie sighed. "You're telling me." Beat. "Raumon, I'm gonna have to minimize you before anyone sees you, alright?"   
Raumon nodded, but he still grumpily folded his arms right before he vanished.

Sam sighed, looking over at Natalie. "Look, my car's over here. Keep me updated if you find anything out, okay?"

 

***

After Natalie had gotten home, she was right back to cleaning, now fueled by _annoyance_. Now that the shock had worn off, she was mostly more confused than angry.

Luckily, Raumon was there to pick up the slack.

"I can't believe," Raumon said; he was sitting in his little nest, fuming, "that _he_ has a digimon. He's a _douchebag_. How did we not notice?"

"Maybe it's a new thing?" Natalie offered as a suggestion -- after all, digimon were coming through, right? Maybe this was a new development? ... but thinking back, to back when they were dating, she could remember Ryan being evasive-- and she realized that maybe she hadn't realized were weird because she did them too. They had minimized their time spent actually at either of their homes whenever possible, even though Ryan had his own apartment; he had mentioned, sometimes, an otherwise-unnamed _friend_...   
She could have sworn, too, that more than once she had heard something the size of a dog moving in the other room on a couple occasions when she was at his apartment, and he had just handwaved it off as the upstairs neighbors...

Dammit all.

It wasn't like they had understood any of this in the first place, but this was another uncomfortable spanner in the works. There was _some_ reason all of them had D-Rives, right? If Ryan had one, were they going to have to start working together with him?   
And if so, was she being selfish...?

From her nightstand, Natalie's phone buzzed with a messenger alert.

"If that's him," she said, picking a long-neglected mug off of her desk, "I'm going to throw either myself or my phone out the window. Jury is still out."   
To her immense relief when she picked up her phone, it wasn't-- it was a ping from the group chat.

_i for one am not signing any more people up for the goddamn power ranger squad_ was the message that incurred the alert, and you get one guess who that was courtsy of. (Spoilers: Xander.)   
She and Sam had agreed that she'd break the news to the group chat, and she had done it simply-- simply had said that _apparently_ her ex had a digimon and a D-Rive, and thankfully, nobody had really pried too much.

_Why, I wonder,_ came from Peter, _have we not seen hide nor hair of this before? I'd think if there was another person with a D-Rive they'd be dealing with emergents, judging by how many of them seem to have no trouble finding us._

Sam seemed to concur. _thats what i was thinking. ive been looking on the usual places online-- not that we got a great look at it, but i havent seen anything of his digimon. no pictures, no news footage, not jack._

Before Natalie could thumb in a response to the conversation, her phone buzzed again, and she groaned, because lo and behold, this one was what she was dreading.

_hey nat_ popped up at the top of her screen in the notification.

She opened up the text message history. This was not the first message from him. Above it:   
_saw you in the student union today, should have said hi_ from the middle of January; _nat come on it's been like three months, are you still pissed?_ from the very start of March; and _heyyyy_ from late May. All three preceded this message, all three unanswered.   
(She realized all of a sudden that that last one had come in after the Digimon business had started. She frowned, before closing out of the texts.)

A few seconds later, her phone buzzed again with another message.   
"Ignore it," Raumon advised, but Natalie huffed a frustrated breath, dropping onto her bed as she, against her better judgment, opened it. He waited for her to read it, before he asked: "What's he want?"

"I think he's saying he wants to meet up so he can explain himself about the digimon stuff," Natalie said, squinting at her phone. "I think."

"Ignore it," Raumon said again, folding his arms. "Bet you five bucks it'll be five minutes of him explaining that he has a digimon, and twenty five of him trying to guilt trip you _again_ , and then I'm going to have to materialize and punch him in the face, and it'll be a huge scene."

As much as Natalie disliked Ryan, Raumon disliked him five times as much. It wasn't that Raumon had always hated him or anything, but over time, Ryan had dissolved every last bit of goodwill the little digimon had in him.

See, Natalie and Ryan had dated for... about eight months? Almost nine? And it had started out fine, but Ryan... whenever he did anything wrong, he found a way to blame anyone but himself-- and mysteriously often, things would end up being Natalie's fault somehow, even if he never explicitly pinned blame on her. He refused to take a hint when Natalie said she needed time alone to cool down after arguments, which only ever made things worse; this was, obviously, a habit he still had.

That in mind, you can imagine how well the breakup went-- and it wasn't even like they could completely avoid each other after the fact, as they frequently crossed paths on campus. Raumon was halfway sure that no small part of why Natalie was even remotely entertaining this idea now was because of that blame-throwing tendency.

"It might be useful information," Natalie said, looking over at Raumon, and she could tell that he agreed, but he wasn't thrilled about this either, but... well, it didn't seem like anyone else was going to, right? She was the only one who really had a means to contact him, let alone the drive to do so...   
"And I'll let you punch him if he starts up."

"I was already going to reluctantly agree anyway, but that _does_ make me feel better."

 

***

Natalie frowned as she checked her phone. She had agreed -- after promising Raumon that he could deck him if he had to -- to meet up with Ryan at the city park, near the bridge, because she may as well meet him on her home turf if nothing else. The problem, of course: she had agreed to meet him fifteen minutes ago, and he was still nowhere to be seen.

"Why am I not surprised," she said to herself around the twenty-minute mark, sighing as she rested her arms on the rail of the bridge and looked around. As she peered into the shifting leaves of the trees, she swore -- for a moment -- she saw the familiar white shape and big pink-and-green eyes of Ratamon peering down at her out of the boughs.

"Nat!" a too-familiar voice called. Natalie turned to look to see Ryan approaching -- finally -- and as soon as she glanced back to where she had been looking, there was no little white digimon to be seen, and she wondered if she had actually seen him there or not.

She was kind of disappointed-- if it had been Ratamon, she could have asked him some questions. Sure, he'd probably be as evasive as ever, but...

"Hey," she said, raising a hand in halfhearted greeting, crossing to meet him so they were standing in the grass instead of on the bridge itself.

"You were in such a hurry earlier," Ryan said. Beat. "Who was that guy you were with, by the way?" Natalie already felt a sense of creeping dread.

"Sam? He's a friend of mine," she said, emphasizing the word _friend_. "I have those, sometimes."

"Huh. _Friends_ , that's new," he remarked, stroking his chin, and Natalie's sense of creeping dread intensified, even as he tacked on a jovial, "joking!" It didn't make her feel better.

"What did you want to talk about?" Natalie prompted, trying to get this conversation on-track as quickly as possible. "I mean, I figure it had something to do with the giant monsters, correct me if I'm wrong."

"Right-- yeah. Thought I'd catch up, but, you know, guess not, whatever," he muttered that last bit, then rubbed the back of his head as he found his point again. "So you know those monster things that have been happening lately?"

"I've heard," Natalie said, trying her best to sound innocent and clueless. "You have something to do with them?"

Ryan paused for a moment, looking like he was choosing his words carefully. "Kind of yes, kind of no." Beat. "Do you promise not to freak out if I show you something?"

"That's a big question," Natalie said, folding her arms, but she had a feeling she knew what was coming. "I'll try."

"Ha ha," Ryan said, and from within his pocket, he pulled out a D-Rive. Up close, Natalie could see the details-- it was identical to hers, except red where hers was purple and, oddly, white where hers was black, and the little dangling silver charm on the end was a little feathered wing.   
He cast a look over his shoulder, almost like he was making sure nobody was eavesdropping. "I figure you already saw this, so I can't dig myself any deeper," he said, and with a reddish flash, a digimon materialized between them.

"Hi!" the digimon said, holding one paw up as if to shake Natalie's hand. "I'm Shitomon!"

Shitomon was... an odd little digimon, now that Natalie was able to see her proper. She was mammalian, about three feet tall, with wing-like ears that were long enough to drag on the ground, with smaller, rounded, red-tipped nub-like horns further up her forehead. She was mostly tan, with the ends of those long ears and a patch on her tummy being a paler shade. Her eyes were big and golden yellow; her tail, small and fluffy. Her paws were red, and she wore a matching red-- was it a scarf or a bandana? A baggy collar of red fabric, let's say.

Natalie pretended to be surprised, shooting her eyebrows up as she knelt down to be more on eye level with the little creature. "This is what you had with you earlier?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "She's called a Digimon. That's what've been causing all the damage, lately. Not her, obviously, but other digimon. It's kind of complicated, it'd take a really long time to explain."

He was so quick to explain this, Natalie wondered briefly how many other people he'd gone telling. She didn't say any of this, though. "Huh," she said instead, looking back at Shitomon, and she held out a hand to shake her paw. "How long has this been a thing?" She had to try so hard not to roll her eyes-- it wasn't _that_ complicated. (Okay, it was, but the basic gist of it wasn't.)

"I mean, the digimon have just been appearing in the city the past couple months," Ryan said, sounding quite proud of himself for being able to deliver this information, "but Shitomon, god, she's been around for ages... fifteen years I think?"

"Yep!" Shitomon said, proudly putting her hands on her hips.

The gears started going in Natalie's head. "Well, it's nice to meet you properly," she said, putting on a polite smile.

Shitomon smiled. "Likewise."   
(Natalie suddenly got the uncomfortable feeling that Shitomon could tell she was faking surprise-- but was she just being paranoid? Who knew. Either way, she looked over at Ryan instead.)

"The reason I wanted to talk to you," he said, "is that earlier, I saw a digimon on my radar, that looked like it might have been following you. I just think you should be careful."

Natalie furrowed her brow, thinking of when Raumon had popped out of her D-Rive to complain. She stood up straight and looked at Ryan. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, digimon can be really dangerous, and I just don't think you'd want to get involved. I'm just saying, keep an eye out."

Natalie blinked slowly. "Um, what exactly am I keeping an eye out for?"

Ryan exhaled, rubbing the back of his head. "It's... kind of a long story? There's a handful of digimon that Shitomon has trying to find for a really long time. Apparently something changed recently, and there might be a lot of, you know, monster shit happening until we can take care of them--"

"What do you mean, take care of them?" Natalie blurted before she could stop herself. That bunch of digimon that he was referring to... with everything that they _knew_ in mind, she was pretty sure that the _bunch of digimon they're looking for_ was her group.

"Oh, well, it's kind of our thing," Ryan said, and Natalie could swear she felt the pressure in her head get thrown off from the exertion of not rolling her eyes. "When digimon are causing trouble, we've been fighting them and stopping them most of the time." That was rich.

"We? Like, you and Shitomon?" Natalie prompted.

"And a couple others, yeah," Ryan agreed nonchalantly, and that was certainly a vital piece of information, wasn't it. "But it's not just us."   
Natalie frowned, and Ryan shrugged before continuing.   
"You know, it's actually kind of complicated, but just take my word for it, okay? We're keeping a handle on it, and I just don't want you to get caught up in something like this. I figure you might go poking your nose in if I didn't clear it up for you."

"You know, you haven't been doing a very good job of taking care of it, then, if there's all these digimon attacks anyway," Natalie said, and she could tell by the way Ryan was looking at her funny that she may have given too much of her hand away.

"There's more to it than that," Ryan said, exasperated. "There's the feral ones, and we've got a handle on that, but some of the others are only trying to help, and then these digimon we're looking for start causing trouble with--"

"Oh my god," Natalie said-- she couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of that statement.

"What's with you?" Ryan said, raising an eyebrow. "I mean, look, I know you're still pissed at me for some reason, but that's no reason to--"

Seen here: the straw that broke the camel's back. She could take the condescension, she could take the subtle insults, she could even take his taking credit for taking care of digimon attacks, but she had limits.

"Oh, please forgive me for being _pissed_ that you _cheated on me_!" Natalie snapped, taking the step forward and getting in Ryan's face, "for which, I remind you, you still haven't actually _apologized_ \--"

"Hey!" Shitomon barked, rearing down like she was getting ready to fight. "He's just trying to help, you'd think you could put that aside for--!"

"And _now_ ," unperturbed by Shitomon's attempted interruption, Natalie was on a roll, "you're going to come in here talking about things you don't know the first thing about, like you're some kind of magnanimous savior--"

Ryan put up his hands in a whoa-there gesture. "Holy shit, I was just trying to help, you don't have to go all psycho-bitch on me--"

And _that_ was the straw that broke the camel's back, part two: electric boogaloo.

"Don't talk to her like that!" Raumon snapped as he materialized in a surge of purple light, causing both Ryan and Shitomon to stumble backwards.   
In for a penny, in for a pound!

"What the--!?" Ryan yelped, but Shitomon, once she had a second to see Raumon clearly, had a moment of clarity so obvious it was visible on her face. This was, unfortunately, followed by something else.

"Light Shot!" she yelled, gathering up a ball of light in her mouth and spitting it at the other digimon.   
Raumon jumped backwards, as did Natalie, and the sphere of light hit the ground, singing a bit of the grass but otherwise dissipating harmlessly.

"Him!" Shitomon said, turning to Ryan and pointing as Raumon. "That one! He's one of them!"

"Wh-- are you sure?" Ryan blurted, looking between Raumon and his partner. Shitomon nodded resolutely, and Raumon squinted at her-- and for a split second, realization dawned on him, but he didn't have much time to revel in it.

"Ear Pummel!" Shitomon cried. Her wing-like ears(-- were they really ears?) clenched into fists and she lunged at Raumon, delivering a one-two punch that caught the little bird off-guard, sending him tumbling backwards.

"Dark Ring!" Raumon yelled before he had even finished moving, and underneath Shitomon's feet a purplish-blackish spell-circle appeared. It surged with energy, and Shitomon yelped like she was standing on coals.

Shitomon leapt into the air, flaring her wing-ears out, and they caught the air, keeping her off the ground. She gathered energy in her mouth and fired it with a yell of, "Light Shot!"

Raumon stumbled out of the way of the little orb of light for the second time, and he feinted to the side as he rushed at Shitomon, who had just landed on the ground again. "Symptom Claw!" he yelled, slashing out at Shitomon with claws glowing purple, but she twisted out of the way.

It was rapidly becoming apparent that if it kept going the way it was, nothing was going to get done.

"Nat," Ryan said, because even now he couldn't help but give unsolicited advice, "you should maybe get out of the way real quick."

"Oh my god," Natalie said, but even as she did, she saw both Shitomon and Ryan's D-Rive begin to glow. She did take a half-step back, but with the river behind her, she didn't have much room in which to operate.

 

"Shitomon, drive evolve to..."

Shitomon's body grew becoming more sleek and enlongated; her legs grew into powerful haunches, and her arms grew in length as well, reaching almost to the ground. Her red markings disappeared as her fur lightened in shade. Feathery wings erupted from her back, and the odd little horns on her head split apart into red-tipped feathers. Gold jewelry chains settled around her forearms, and golden cuffs came to rest around her ankles. A red jewel, edged by gold, grew out of her chest just below where her red scarf still sat. Her tail grew longer and cat-like, and it, too, was tipped with a wing-like tuft. Her mostly-flat face grew into more of a rounded muzzle with tufted cheeks, and a strange design made up of four red triangles appeared on her forehead, practically glowing.

As she settled into her new form, she resembled a very odd angelic dragon, covered in sleek tan and white fur and feathers, and Natalie finally got a good look at the digimon she had seen fighting Snimon.

"Malakhimon!"

"Oh, come on," Raumon said more to himself than to Natalie.

"Southern Cross!" Malakhimon cried, and four shining orbs of light appeared in the air in front of her. The orbs of light extended into rays, which intersected to form a shining cross. There was no time to admire it, though, because the moment it had formed, the cross-shape light fired like a beam.

Raumon tried to dodge out of the way, but he wasn't able to-- the light hit him and he yelled in pain, knocked down to a kneeling position.

"Raumon!" Natalie yelled, and before Malakhimon's beam of light had the chance to fade, Raumon began to glow in turn.

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

"Well, damn," Ryan said as the light faded, "guess you were right."

"As usual," Malakhimon preened.

"I don't particularly want to fight. Not you, anyway," Doctorimon said. The last part came as kind of an afterthought, as after a moment of realization, he'd _really like_ to fight Ryan, but Malakhimon...

"Conveniently," Malkahimon said, "what you want doesn't particularly matter. Southern Cross!"

"Face of Judgment!" Doctorimon released a stream of black flames from his staff, and when the fire met the light, they seemed to cancel each other out, as if the black fire absorbed all of the white light. Though he had no visible eyes under his mask, he squinted-- was Malakhimon really so single-minded that she would attack him, even with their humans so close?

"What on earth is your problem?" Natalie said, looking over at Ryan.

"That digimon is dangerous!" Ryan said, gesturing at Doctorimon as the plague doctor leapt away so that Malakhimon's next attack wouldn't put the humans in the line of fire.

"We aren't even the ones causing damage!" Natalie said. "Just because we're on the scene and trying to stop destructive digimon doesn't mean--"

"This is more important than feral digimon," Ryan spat back. "He's dangerous! He's--"

They were cut off as Malakhimon and Doctorimon exchanged blow for blow, and it was hard not to get distracted for at least a half-a-second. Doctorimon was playing as defensively as he could, dodging attacks; Malakhimon, meanwhile, was trying to minimize the damage she did to the trees and the area around them, and it was like a strange, strange game of cat and mouse.

"He's what?" Natalie demanded, folding her arms at Ryan.

Ryan looked at her like she was stupid. "He's a refugee-- he's a criminal!"

Refugee-- that was the word that Strigimon had used, wasn't it? "Where the hell did you get that from? He's been my friend for fifteen years, the worst thing he's ever done is forgot to return a library book!"

They were cut off again by the digimon fighting.

"Holy Charge!" Malkhimon yelled, her body engulfed in light as she ran to tackle the smaller champion-level digimon, who had backed himself into a corner, with the trees behind him giving him fewer options to feint to.

"Black Bloom!" Doctorimon cried, producing a black rose and swiping it through the air, releasing a shower of razor-sharp black petals. Though they didn't stop Malakhimon, they did slow her down.   
She powered through and smashed into Doctorimon, who was sent flying backwards, but the exertion and the shower of petals took their toll on Malakhimon. Even when the light of her attack faded, she was still glowing, and she began to shrink back down into Shitomon, looking quite a bit worse for the wear.

By the time he hit the ground, and was only feet from tumbling down the slope into the river, Doctorimon had begun to glow as well, and left Raumon in his wake.

Natalie and Ryan both glared at each other for a half-a-second, neither wanting to be the one to break eye contact, before both ran to their partners.   
(Natalie couldn't deny the intense sense of relief she felt when defeat only led to Doctorimon returning to being Raumon, and not the pixellated explosion that happened to the other digimon they had fought.)

"Are you okay?" she asked quietly, and Raumon looked battered and scuffed.

"I'm fine," he said, though he groaned a little as he sat up and glanced around.   
Some ways away, Ryan was picking Shitomon up into his arms. He appeared to be talking to her for a moment or two, and she responded, before Ryan pulled out his D-Rive one-handed and minimized her.

They could only wonder what they had said.

"I should minimize you, too," Natalie said, petting Raumon's head feathers. "At least until we can get back to my car. I have the feeling we're not going to be staying."

Raumon nodded, and in a moment's notice, he was safely minimized in Natalie's D-Rive.

"I don't think we have anything else to talk about," Ryan said, loud enough for Natalie to hear him, but she felt like that couldn't be farther from the truth.

"I guess we don't," she said right back, despite herself. She supposed that right now, communication was going to be ineffective at best, and she knew -- they both knew -- this wasn't going to be the last time they intersected.

"Dammit," Natalie muttered, looking at her D-Rive as she walked back to her car. "Dammit all to hell." When she looked over her shoulder back towards the river, Ryan had already taken off in another direction. _Good riddance,_ she thought, and she mulled over what he had said as she unlocked her doors and climbed in, and as Raumon rematerialized in the shotgun seat.

"You okay?" she asked again.

"Yeah," Raumon said, even though he sounded like he'd had better days. "For a given value of okay," he added, which sounded closer to the truth, and Natalie sighed.

At least she had actually gotten some new information from this whole experience, which was more than she had really anticipated, but she wasn't sure how much better that would make her feel.   
But she did know what would make the both of them feel at least a little better.

"Wanna get something to eat on the way back?"

"Don't I always?" Raumon said, cracking a half-smile, and Natalie smiled back.


	10. Episode 10: Light Up the Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same notes as always-- two weeks left on the new extended contest, and check out the site for the Intended Reading Experience(tm), but aside from that... see you on the fifteenth!

In the aftermath of the Ryan incident (the... Ryincident? God, no), there had been a bit of a disagreement over whether or not they really needed to worry about the possibility of other D-Rive holders. As a result, the past, oh, week or so had not been so great for morale.

In the red corner, of the strong and vehement position that they should seek other D-Rive holders and their digimon out, if for no other reason than understanding the situation more fully: Peter.

In the blue corner, of the strong and vehement position that they should mind their own damn business, deal with it when and if it happened, and that they didn't need any more (quote) _goddamn Power Rangers on the squad_ : Xander.

Stuck at various places in the crossfire: everyone else.

At present, they were, as they had kind of become accustomed to, gathered at the Lotus.  
(Well, _they_ meant Xander, Meghan, and Natalie at a table, while Peter was working, and Sam was on a strict _tell me if I miss anything_ absence, which was a pattern he held even when there weren't arguments going on. He just didn't particularly fancy public meetups.)  
Regardless, it was the first time they had all really gathered in-person since Ryan's reveal. It was a cloudy late afternoon; to make a joke about there being a storm coming would be a bit on-the-nose in the metaphor department, but rain was likely in the coming hours, and Atlas Park on the whole was blanketed in grey.

"What I'm saying," Xander said, balancing his chair on its back legs; the only reason he didn't kick his feet up onto the table is because there were drinks on it, "is that if these assholes want to start a fight with me, that's one thing, but until they do, it's not really my problem."

"First of all, sit like a normal person or I'll come over there and pull the chair out from under you," Peter said from over at the counter; it was _dead_ in the Lotus today, so he was free to eavesdrop and participate as long as he turned his attention to the sparing customers who wandered in, got their drinks, and left. "Second of all, it _is_ our problem. What he said lined up with what Strigimon said, which means it follows that if his digimon has a problem with Raumon, it's likely to have a problem with all of ours."

"You know, I don't know about you, but _I_ just wanted coffee," Natalie said dully to Meghan, who sipped her boba tea solemnly and rested her chin on her hand.  
While they were on the whole getting along decently as a group, Xander and Peter were sniping at each other more and more, getting to the point where -- even _with_ others around to try and temper them -- their interactions were getting more openly hostile.

"Yeah, that's _your_ problem. It's not my problem unless I make it my problem," Xander shot back.

"Well, considering how good you are at making _everything_ a problem," Peter muttered, "that shouldn't take long."

Xander glared daggers. "Well hey, I'm not the one throwing a bitch-fit over chairs," he snapped, and to make his point, he tipped his chair back a few more precarious inches.

"Can we get back on subject, please?" Meghan said, which at least chastised Xander a little bit. He didn't return his chair to its full four-legged stance, but he did at least return it to the original angle he was balancing at.

There was a brief, tense pause. Peter broke it: "The subject, which was?" he said, gesturing at the girls for one of them to prompt them back on track.

"That I think we should start being really careful about taking care of emergents in groups," Natalie said. "Just in case."

Xander and Peter managed to keep off each other's backs, once again, by thoroughly ignoring each other; they both spoke freely to Meghan and Natalie, but any time they had to acknowledge a point made by the other they did it in a roundabout fashion, and it was frustrating as hell, but it was better than them sniping at each other.

 

***

"What even is it that annoys you so much about Peter?" Meghan asked, stretching her arms above her head.

It was a little while later; the three of them who didn't work there were clearing out of the Lotus, as Peter would be getting off his shift soon. While Natalie had parked a little ways away and so parted ways with them as soon as they left the building, Xander and Meghan had both walked around to the back alley behind the building, where they had parked. They had actually reached their cars already, and were simply lounging as they talked; Meghan was leaning against the side of hers, and Xander was sitting on the hood of his, looking at his phone.

"He just has the kind of face I want to punch," Xander said, as though that explained jack shit. "You looked at him recently? He looks like one of the fucking Proclaimers." He was still not paying attention, and affected a horrendously bad Scottish accent for all of half a sentence. " _And I would walk 500 miles just to_ get the fuck away from him."

"That is," Desmon said, materializing next to Xander on his car hood, "hands down, the _stupidest_ insult you've ever come up with, Xandy."

"Never call me that again."  
Desmon stuck her tongue out.

A moment later, Oremon materialized next to Meghan in turn. They were in a back alley, standing between their cars; prying eyes were going to be few enough that being seen wasn't a huge risk.

" _Regardless,_ it isn't particularly helpful," Oremon said, folding his arms.

"It really isn't," Meghan said, agreeing with her partner. Beat. "Though-- yeah, that's a _really_ weird thing to insult someone over, what the heck, where did that even come from?"

"What do you want me to say?" Xander said, shrugging and totally not explaining his inexplicable apparent hatred of the Proclaimers. "I don't like fake-deep hipsters who wear scarves in summer and act all fake deep and _oh ho look at me being all fake-objective and pretending I'm cool-headed, like I'm not a sanctimonious cockhead_." He waved his hands in front of him, palms out and fingers splayed, his tone mocking.

Meghan frowned, arms akimbo. "I don't know, I don't think he's that bad. A little..." Beat. "Hipster-y, yeah, but there are worse things to be."

Xander raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, like, pond scum, maybe."

Meghan stuck her tongue out. "You know what I mean. So he doesn't get mad at everything. I don't get how that's a problem."

He shrugged. "Fucked if I know, then. It happens, don't always need some deep profound reason. He pisses me off because he has just the right personality to piss me off. I inexplicably hate a hell of a lot of people."

"Yeah, well," Meghan said, "most people you just inexplicably hate, you don't have to work together with to fight monsters. So, you know, maybe take that into consideration?"

Xander grunted as he slid off of his hood. He didn't admit she was right, but at least he didn't outright deny it.  
"Yeah, well," he said, saying absolutely nothing of substance, and unlocking his car doors. "I'll see you later, yeah?"

"Yep," Meghan said, giving a thumbs-up, and quite clearly feeling like she had made a point that Xander couldn't deny, judging by his slightly gruff closure of the conversation.

Desmon circled around to the other side and pulled the shotgun-side door open, but before she jumped in, she popped her head up over the top of the roof.  
"He's just being a grump!" she said cheerfully, before she ducked back down and closed the car door behind her.

Meghan put her hands on her hips and shook her head as she and Oremon watched Xander pull away with a nod of acknowledgement and a one-handed wave.

"One of these days," Oremon said, matter-of-factly and bluntly, "I'm going to headbutt him in the stomach."

"Don't you dare!" she scolded, gently bopping him on the head with a closed fist. Oremon snorted.

Meghan sighed as she leaned against her car for a few more minutes. Out of everyone, it seemed she was the least worried about all of this. Maybe she _should_ have been more worried, but the way she saw it, it wouldn't do much good. Much higher on her list of concerns was trying to maintain the group harmony that seemed to come and go like the tide.

 

***

A short while later, Peter arrived home.

He gingerly shut the apartment door behind him and ran a hand backwards through his hair in exasperation. Ian was at work, so the place was empty; he looked around, double checking this, before he blurted to nobody in particular:  
"What the hell is his _problem_!?"

Banmon materialized behind him, and shrunk back a bit from his outburst -- just because she hated loud noises -- but her expression was full of concern. This was bothering him more than usual; she slipped past him, drifting around to his frontside. "Is something wrong?"

She didn't actually expect an answer, so she wasn't surprised when she didn't get one immediately.  
Truth be told, she herself also had a bit of trouble dealing with Xander's... _aggressive_ communication style, but she could tell it was really beginning to wear Peter down, and it was starting to worry her a little bit.

"It's like he's going out of his way to piss me off," he said after a few moments pause, walking across the room. He threw himself onto the couch, and began to pull his shoes off a bit too aggressively. "And I don't get it. What the hell did I _do to him_ to piss him off so badly?"

Banmon paused for a moment. "It might just be that you're hard to read," she supposed. Xander was very... up front? (That's a diplomatic way of saying _tactless and blunt_.) Peter, by contrast, had just about never been straightforward in his life.

Peter stayed quiet for a few seconds, then looked over at Banmon. He figured she was right, but he was still frustrated, so he was still testy when he spoke again. "That doesn't excuse the fact that it seems that he's deliberately _trying_ to get in the way of us figuring things out just so that we don't mess up his personal life or, god forbid, infringe on his free time."

Peter very rarely got like this-- usually, he was able to sublimate a lot of his frustration, so Banmon knew: his patience really must have been wearing thin for him to vent even this much.

"He probably just... has a different perspective on it. Different priorities... He sees it differently, I'm sure," Banmon said carefully.

Peter sighed, digging his D-Rive out of his pocket and looked intently at it.  
"I understand that. Perspective is one thing, but he doesn't just get to _opt out_ ," he said, turning the little device over in his hand.

Banmon thought about remarking that Peter wasn't exactly the best at being a team player, either, but she didn't think it would be worth the trouble of bringing it up. This wasn't the first time she had seen him get deeply invested in something, but...

Peter continued talking anyway, so she didn't have to worry about what she did or didn't say. "I don't understand how he can _not_ want to know what's going on."

"I'm sure it'll come to us whether we want it to or not," Banmon said, sighing. She did understand why Peter was so interested in it, but truth be told, she almost understood Xander's desire to be left out of it.  
... well. To a degree. She still couldn't quite gel with his aforementioned bluntness and aggression.

But... all of this talk of criminals and refugees and glory and shoot-first ask-questions-later... she had never been a fan of the adrenaline rush of fighting in the first place, you know? She didn't need all of this extra intrigue and mystery and secrets on top of it, but she was starting to accept how little what _she_ wanted was going to matter.  
Had she said that out loud, it might have sounded harsher than she intended it to, so again, she stayed quiet.

"Right," Peter said reluctantly, turning his D-Rive over in his hand. Why on earth did he -- did _any_ of them have these? Both the group he knew, and Ryan and the other unknowns-- what, if anything, did they have in common? What did the _digimon_ have in common?

He got the feeling, all of a sudden, that he would probably be happier if he didn't go sticking his nose in looking for answers-- but when was the last time that stopped him?

 

***

As long as we're checking up on everyone...

It was later that night-- around half-past ten, which meant the night was still young. Her sleep schedule had long since slipped, and she would likely be up for a while yet, but she still lay in her bed, one hand tucked behind her head and the other thumbing through her phone.  
Though she didn't want to admit it, Ryan's words had particularly stuck in her brain.

Two particular words, actually -- _refugees_ and _criminals_.  
Those were _not_ the same thing, no matter how much Ryan and Shitomon had seemed convinced that they were.

But...  
She looked over at Raumon, who was settled in his little nest, beak buried in a book. Now, rest assured-- nothing that Ryan could possibly say was going to change her perception of Raumon, but it was true that there was this huge swath of his past that was a massive blank, and there was no knowing the extent of how much they didn't know.  
She heaved a heavy sigh and closed her eyes.

It wasn't to say that she was totally delusional about all of this, of course, but ever since the incident last week... well, first of all, the digimon front had been suspiciously quiet. She couldn't help but wonder if it was because there were no digimon coming through, or if Ryan and his mysterious squad were pre-empting them, and if so, _why_.  
She had to admit that before now, she had been... well. _Excited_ felt like too flippant a term to describe how she felt about this whole thing. She wasn't happy about digimon coming through and causing havoc and needing to be fought back, but it was a _rush_ , a sense of purpose and of meaning that had overwhelmed her thoughts since the start of summer.

Now, there was a kind of dread-- the idea that at any moment, they might run into someone who knew more and meant to do them harm... it ind of took the joy out of playing hero, you know? ... well, for a certain definition of joy.  
To say nothing of the interpersonal friction it was causing...

"Natalie!"

She didn't know if she had closed her eyes for thirty seconds or thirty minutes, but Raumon's voice cut through her reverie, and her eyes snapped open. He was scrambling onto her bed to hand her her D-Rive. She could already see that it was lit up, bright as a beacon, which meant--

_Crap._

She grabbed it out of his claws, navigating to its radar practically by reflex. A few feet away, her phone dinged with a notification, but she already knew what it was going to be about. There was a digimon on her radar, and she thumbed over it.

_Meramon - Champion Level._

By the looks of it, it had emerged in the city park, or somewhere very close to it, and was on the move.

Natalie sprang to her feet, grabbing her phone. She hurried out a rushed _something came up I'll be back soon_ to her (mostly apathetic) family as she stumbled out through the living room.

 

***

Before even seeing the digimon in question, before even parking her car, Natalie and Raumon could tell that Meramon was a fiery digimon. As they drove closer, a plume of black smoke rose out of the downtown area, illuminated from below with the vivid orange of a fresh fire.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

By the time Natalie was able to get out of her car and run closer to where the Meramon was on her radar, the glow was burning brighter, and sirens were blaring, closer and closer. The ear-splitting screech of a fire engine siren, police, emergency services... The street lamps that weren't destroyed were flickering badly.

Natalie was running against the flow of people trying to flee, but in the chaos, nobody really paid her much mind. She looked around frantically-- Meramon was practically right on top of her--

"Burning Fist!" A voice yelled from above, and a fireball soared down from on high, smashing into the concrete and bursting apart into embers that Natalie had to jump away from.

Meramon, as it turned out, was a tall, humanoid digimon, almost entirely featureless except for solid-blue eyes, a stitched-shut mouth, and the fact that its entire body was completely engulfed in flames, which explained a hell of a lot. It currently stood some five stories above street level, and apparently quite pleased with itself and its handiwork.  
The building it stood on, meanwhile, was _on fire_ , which was what had caused the massive plume of black smoke that, even without the radar, would have given away its position.

 

Raumon materialized with a flash of purple light, and Natalie wasn't about to stop him. It was too risky now, with so many people, to digivolve, but... at least they could distract Meramon for now, right...?

Some people stopped and stared, but many were too busy trying to get away from the flames to notice the little bird.  
Meramon, of course, was much more perceptive.

"Burning Fist!" it yelled from on high, its arm igniting with even more flames. It threw a punch into the air, which materialized as a fireball, sailing in an arc down at Raumon, who deftly leapt out of the way, and Natalie leapt away in the other direction, not wanting to be set on fire any more than Raumon wanted to be.

Natalie and Raumon waited with bated breath for what was about to happen. A second later, Meramon crouched and leapt down to street level. It didn't seem to mind the fall at all, and it left burnmarks in the pavement where it landed. It reared up to its full height and smirked a stitched-mouth smirk, and it began to advance on Raumon.

 _Shit,_ Natalie thought, but at that moment--

"Hey!" Meghan called from behind, and Natalie whipped around to see her and Oremon approaching.

"Yeah-- we just got here," Natalie said, nodding. "Could use a little help though--"

She need say no more; Oremon rushed forward, growling and rearing his head down, charging forward despite the intense heat around Meramon. "Iron Head!" he snarled, rushing past Raumon and catching Meramon in the knee with his horns, which didn't do much to stop the big fiery digimon, but it did make him stumble and turn away from the bird digimon.

"Dark Ring!" Raumon yelled, using the distraction that Oremon offered to attack, himself. A black spell circle appeared underneath Meramon, and tendrils of energy shot up out of it, seeping into the flames and causing the champion-level digimon to hiss with pain.

"Moon Howler!" the familiar voice of Gelermon cried, a green-and-black beam of energy flying past Natalie and Meghan and smashing straight into Meramon's chest. For a few brief seconds, it extinguished the flames on Meramon's body in the spot that it impacted.

"Well, this is just great, isn't it?" Sam said as he arrived on the scene, running up to join the girls, with Gelermon right on his heels. (They couldn't make him come to actually talk in person worth a damn, but he was certainly quick to get on the scene whenever a digimon was fucking things up, like the kid who never comes to class except to take the tests, except the tests were the destruction of public property.)

"So, are we just saying fuck it to the secrecy thing?" she asked snidely, looking around before smirking. "Cause I can deal with that." Without waiting, she rushed forward, her handpaws igniting with the same energy she had just fired as a beam. "Void Paw!" she yelled, rushing forward and striking out at Meramon's shins.

"Heat Knuckle!" Meramon yelled, throwing out a fiery punch as Gelermon approached. She dodged out of the way, but only narrowly, and she could practically feel the tips her ears get singed.

The crowds were starting to thin as police cars and firetrucks began to arrive on the scene, and the humans partnered to digimon were trying to keep back-- trying to look inconspicuous.

Enter: Peter.  
"Hope I'm not late," he said as he showed up to the party, and Banmon materialized beside him. Raumon, Gelermon, and Oremon were pretty well occupied with the Meramon, trying to keep it from spewing flames towards a) anything flammable, or b) anything living, throwing out attacks as frequently as they could.

"I think we're all a bit late," Sam remarked dryly, looking at the burning building with a frown and a shake of his head.

"Just this one to deal with?" Peter said, looking to Natalie.

She nodded. "As far as I know, anyway," she said, not discounting the idea that anything could happen at this point.

"Shadow Shot!" Banmon cried as she floated into the battle, lobbing blobs of shadowy energy at Meramon. Like Gelermon's Moon Howler, the places where the attacks impacted temporarily smothered the fire on Meramon's body.

"Burning Fist!" Meramon yelled, throwing out his fist and hurling a fireball at Banmon. She dodged out of the way, but the fireball soared past her and smashed into the burning building, and she made a distressed _oh no_ squeak.

Raumon tried once more. "Dark Ring!" he yelled, and again the spell circle appeared underneath Meramon's feet.

"Earth Wrecker!" Oremon yelled, taking advantage of Meramon's distraction to kick up and lob a couple of jagged rocks at the fiery digimon; Gelermon and Banmon, in their own ways, followed suit.

"Moon Howler!"

"Shadow Shot!"

One attack after another hit Meramon, and it curled its lip with a snarl in response.

"Heat Wave!" it yelled, and its entire body began to flare up intensely. With a primal cry, it released an omnidirectional blast of fire. The human stumbled backwards, and the digimon braced themselves for the powerful blast of fire. It seemed larger after it had finished attacking, as though emboldened by the fires it had started around it.

Now would certainly be a good time for some assistance from--

As if summoned by the lament of her absence, a familiar bat's voice rang out in the air. "Acro Slicer!" Two crescent-shaped blades of air soared past the humans, smashing straight into Meramon and snuffing out more of its fire where they hit its body.

Desmon flapped her way past and into the fray, with Xander coming jogging up after her.

"I miss much?" he said sarcastically, looking around.

"Nice of you to join us," Peter muttered. If looks could kill, the glare Xander gave Peter would have struck him dead.

"Better late than never?" Meghan tried, speaking to nobody in particular, but her voice got lost in the chaos and the sirens and the borderline panic.

"Oh, I certainly missed all the arguing," Sam said flatly, sarcastically, shaking his head.

Natalie sighed through her nose, but turned her attention back to the digimon. They were doing a pretty decent job, though they sometimes seemed to clash a little bit-- only narrowly did they avoid attacking each other, or running into the line of fire of someone else's attack, but for the most part they were doing fine together.

"Symptom Claw!" Raumon yelled, rushing into close range with Meramon at last to deliver a slash of purple-glowing claws to the big flaming digimon.

"Iron Head!" Oremon yelled as well, rushing in right alongside the bird, bowing his head and smashing into Meramon and charging straight on, following through on his headbutt.

Desmon's cry of "Black Static!" accompanied the rings of staticky energy that flew out at Meramon, each one causing a little bit more fire on its body to flicker out as it hit.

"Moon Howler"! Gelermon yelled, having been slightly humbled by the fireball she had barely missed the last time she had gotten up close and personal with Meramon.

"Shadow Shot!" Banmon cried-- her other attack being the one that involved making prolonged contact, and her arms being made of cloth, she really didn't want to risk getting any more up close and personal than that.

Meramon began to flare up, growling-- but it was cut off.

"Light Shot!

"Oh, crap," Natalie muttered, recognizing that attack name before she even saw the attacker. Indeed, coming up from behind Meramon, jumping out of an alleyway, was Shitomon -- long ears and red cowl and all, and her little pellet of light smacked Meramon squarely in the back.

Out of the alleyway from whence Shitomon had come, a too-familiar face emerged-- Ryan, gripping his D-Rive in hand, and he stumbled to a stop when he saw that he and Shitomon weren't the first pair on the block.

The fiery digimon snarled as he turned on the weird little rabbit.

"This the guy?" Peter said, looking over at Natalie, but it was Sam who nodded an agreement.

"I already hate him," Xander deadpanned, looking him up and down.

"Burning Fist!" Meramon yelled, shooting a fireball Shitomon's way, but she leapt up and caught the air with her ears, drifting back down to the ground.

"Magic Trick!" an entirely-new voice yelled, and out of the alleyway from whence Shitomon had come, a shining blue-and-white orb came sailing through the air. It impacted Meramon and exploded like a bomb.

The digimon were quick to look for the culprit, and luckily, he came sprinting out of the alleyway mere moments after his attack did. The new digimon was a fox of sorts, with creamy yellow fur and dark-brown marks on his paws, ears, and tail... but oddly, his face looked like a noh mask, all white with red markings. (Then again, considering they were used to Raumon's mask face, it really wasn't _that_ weird.) His eyes looked as though they were shut, and it wore a massive grin on its face, showing off rows of sharp teeth.  
In one paw he clutched the neck of a large tan bag, which he was carrying slung over his shoulder.

"Wild Paw!"

This was a _second_ new voice, and a red-orange blur came running out of the alleyway in turn, accompanied by a streak of yellow light. She only stopped when she collided with Meramon and leapt back, disengaging after striking fast with huge, blunt claws. This one was a red panda, with enormous claws on her hands and feet alike, and a thickly-striped tail longer than she was tall. Her eyes, by contrast to the fox, were large and blue, and very alert.

"Well, would you look at that," the fox said cheerfully, "the gang's all here."

"Meramon first," the red panda advised.

Shitomon furrowed her brow but nodded slowly.

Meramon, meanwhile, had no time for such politeness. "Heat Wave!" it roared, sending out a wave of fire that went in all directions, forcing the digimon both in front of and behind it to brace themselves for the burn.

And then, all bets were off.

"Symptom Claw!"

"Iron Head!"

"Shadow Shot!"

"Moon Howler!"

"Black Static!"

"Light Shot!"

"Magic Trick!"

"Wild Paw!"

Eight rookie-level digimon attacked at once, ranged attacks and melee attacks all focused on the big fiery Meramon, and with all of them striking at once...

Meramon snarled with pain before it began to distort, and it let out one last burst of flame before it exploded instead into light and data, which dispersed into eight thin beams that rushed towards eight D-Rives.

Wait-- eight?  
Come on, it should come as no surprise.

Coming running out of the alley, a little late to the party, were two more humans.  
The first was a young man with tan skin and dark hair long enough to tie into a ponytail; the second, a fair-skinned young woman with brown hair that almost reached the small of her back, and yes, both of these people cluched D-Rives in their hands. The former's was cyan and white, and the latter's, yellow and white.

" _Cho_ ," Xander remarked flatly in an understated expression of dull surprise.

Ever had a standoff involving monsters in front of a burning building? Well, to be fair, nobody here had, either, and nobody could say this is how they anticipated any part of their lives going, but, hey, you win some, you lose some.

"Fancy seeing all you here," Ryan said, putting on a fake jovial tone.  
Natalie and Raumon couldn't help but notice that this time, Shitomon wasn't leaping quite so quickly to attacking. (Maybe it was because she was outnumbered this time.)

"I don't believe most of us have met," Ryan said when nobody continued, and he kept up a wonderfully annoying fake tone of cordiality. "These are Jen and Eli," he said, gesturing to the two strangers at his side, the young woman and the young man in turn, "and their partners, Hulimon," the fox, "and Lurumon," the red panda. "Who are all these people, Nat?" he asked, looking at Natalie in particular as he gestured around at the other humans and the digimon accompanying them.

Natalie folded her arms and remained tight-lipped.

"We don't want any trouble," Meghan said instead, putting her hands up in a defensive gesture.

"We might want trouble," Oremon muttered-- not the first time he had said this.

"Trouble's kind of your _thing_ , though, isn't it?" Hulimon said, tapping a finger to the side of his snout. "Harboring dangerous criminals and/or _being_ dangerous criminals and all that."

There that old chestnut was again.

"You know," Gelermon said, putting her hands on her hips, "we've heard that from a half a dozen digimon with a chip on their shoulders now, it'd be really nice if one of you could take the time to explain what the fuck you're talking about before you start trying to tear our faces off."

"Why should we waste time explaining it to you?" Shitomon said, frowning. "You know as well as we do." She looked slightly confused, slightly put out, but not about to back down now.

"We _really don't,_ " Peter said, folding his arms.

Behind him, Xander had a different idea. "Let's fucking book it," he said, not quietly enough. "Before this gets uglier than it already is."

" _No_ ," Peter said immediately, glancing to the side at Xander and glaring.

"So we're doing it the hard way?" Lurumon asked, glancing sidelong at her compatriots, and then over her shoulder at Jen. They exchanged nods.

"We don't have to do it the hard way," Banmon said quietly, but she went ignored; Ryan, Jen, and Eli all held up their D-Rives, which began to glow in their respective colours.

"Hell yeah!" Hulimon cackled, and if possible, his grin spread even wider.

They did, in fact, have to do this the hard way.

 

"Shitomon, drive evolve to... Malakhimon!"

"Hulimon, drive evolve to..."

"Lurumon, drive evolve to..."

The little fox -- Hulimon -- digimon grew to human proportions, though his odd mask-like face didn't see fit to change at all, bar the fact that the red markings changed slightly-- mark the difference. His legs and arms grew until he stood taller than the humans, but he stopped growing there. Bandages appeared around his feet and hands, and a long, navy-blue jacket settled onto his shoulders-- just his shoulders, though, as he didn't put his arms through the sleeves, leaving them to hang free. The collar stood tall, and it was unclear how it stayed on, but -- again, digimon, they had learned to accept some oddness.  
Dark-blue pants materialized, and a black belt, with black suspenders hanging loose at his sides, appeared as well. His tail split into three, and a twig with a leaf at the end appeared clenched between his razor-sharp teeth. He hoisted up his bag, which had grown to scale with him, and set it down next to him as the light dispersed.

The red panda, on the other side of the humans, grew to much larger proportions. Her legs grew into powerful haunches as the claws on her hands grew to impressive size, while the ones on her feet shrunk down to far more normally sized claws. She began to look more and more ferocious than she had as Lurumon, the more she grew. Her tail grew to keep in proportion with her-- that is to say, _still longer than the rest of her body_. Two golden rings appeared around the base of it, and a length of bandage wrap settled around her midsection.

A fluffy mane of white fur settled around her neck, as her extremeties grew darker. Lighter circles appeared on her hips and her forearms, while tufts of fur sprouted at her shoulders and the junction of her hips and her body. Her fur looked impossibly thick and dense, and she reared up with surprising grace as the light dispersed.

"Hokkaimon!"

"Himamon!"

 

Facing down with three champion-level digimon with a bone to pick and human partners... well, what choice was there?

 

"Oremon, drive evolve to... Ibexmon!"

"Banmon, drive evolve to... Banshemon!"

"Gelermon, drive evolve to... Frekimon!"

"Desmon, drive evolve to... Corymon!"

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

 

God, there was a lot of yelling going on tonight, and that was before you even took into account all the chaos from _the fire_.

"Now may not be a great time for this!" Natalie yelled, shielding her eyes from the bright light of all the digivolution. She didn't even have time to appreciate that this was, as far as she could remember, the first time that all of their digimon had been evolved at the same time.  
They were locked in a standoff, both sides watching the other carefully for any sign of movement.

"Get out of the way," Malakhimon said, looking pointedly at the humans standing behind the line of digimon. "You don't have to be any more involved in this."

"They're likely too invested already," Himamon said, glancing sidelong at her allies. "The best we can do is try not to hurt them in the process."

"No skin off my nose," Hokkaimon said, shrugging one shoulder, and without preamble--

"Moon Bomb!"  
He reached one paw into an inner pocket of the jacket slung around his shoulders, and pulled out a swirling blue and white orb-- it looked quite similar to the Magic Trick they had seen earlier, but larger. He lobbed it their way, and it exploded in midair, splitting into dozens of smaller orbs-- and each of those smaller orbs exploded like a super-powerful firecracker.

That was enough to break the standoff.

"New Moon Fire!" Frekimon cried, rearing back and releasing a large green fireball from her mouth that smacked straight into Malakhimon.

Malakhimon, in turn, growled and reared down. "Holy Charge!" she cried, her body engulfed in white light as she rushed at the gathered digimon opposite her.

"Terra Spear!" Ibexmon yelled, smashing his hooves into the ground and causing spikes of rock to emerge from the ground underneath Malakhimon as she charged, interrupting her attack.  
This gave the humans a window-- and they took it.

"Come on!" Sam yelled, gesturing. "Let's get out of the way before we lose a limb!"

They needed no second instruction-- the humans scrambled for the sidewalk, and it seemed that the newcomers had had much the same idea.

"Spirit Ripper!" Banshemon called as she shot forward, claws glowing white as she slashed at Hokkaimon, who jumped deftly out of the way.

"Aura Stream!" Himamon yelled while Banshemon tried to rearrange herself, rearing back and gathering up golden energy in her mouth. It crackled like lightning, but when she fired it, it almost looked more like a powerful jet of water than a bolt of electricity. It crashed into the ghost, sending her tumbling.

"Black Stinger!" Corymon yelled, taking to the sky -- but not too far to the sky, if she flew too high, she would have her head in the smoke and the fire, which would do her no good. The black spears of energy hit their mark in Himamon, who was momentarily paralyzed. Before Corymon could gloat, Malakhimon flapped her wings rose into the air and began to glow white, preparing to charge.

Between the fire, the fact that it was eight digimon fighting in the middle of the street... it was cramped, it was chaotic, and it was _loud._  
Even though they were outnumbered, the three new digimon were agile enough to keep the team on their toes-- they couldn't afford to concentrate all their attention on one, lest they leave themselves open to attack from the other two. It was hard for them to work together effectively against three opponents, with so much confusion and clamor to contend with.  
On the other hand, the team _were_ keeping the pressure on well enough to make sure that their three opponents couldn't gain a clear advantage-- which meant that they were mostly stalemating.

"What the fuck is their problem!?" Xander yelled, covering his face with his arms as Malakhimon and Corymon crashed into the burning building, taking out a chunk of the wall and sending debris flying.

Natalie looked over at where Ryan, Eli, and Jen were keeping out of the line of fire, and frowned. She was considering trying to confront one of them, but that seemd like it might end badly for everyone involved.  
More importantly, the fight was starting to get unpleasant.

And to top it all off, it was starting to rain-- the unspoken threat of the dark clouds hanging over the city all day was finally paying off. As the first raindrops fell, the digimon stopped for a half a moment, breathing heavily.

Natalie took advantage of this momentary lull in the fight to run over to where Ryan, Eli, and Jen were; she didn't notice it, but soon, the other members of her team followed suit, rushing after her as she stormed over.

"Call your digimon off!" Natalie yelled.

"And let'em rip our digimon to shreds?" Jen said, incredulous.

"Yours started it!" Meghan said, frowning and furrowing her brow, and at that moment, the lull ended. As if to illustrate Meghan's point, it was Malakhimon who re-ignited it, rushing forward engulfed in white light.

"Excuse me?" Ryan said, raising an eyebrow and gesturing around them-- at the fight, at the fire, at everything. " _Our_ digimon aren't the ones who are responsible for all of this!"

"Neither are ours," Peter said, "you saw the Meramon who started this."  
Natalie coudln't say she was surprised, though-- after he had taken credit for taking care of the emergents, the idea of him pinning blame on them--

"That's not what I'm talking about!" Ryan yelled, cutting off Natalie's train of thought. "All of this! The digimon coming through in the first place!"

Xander curled his lip in disdain. "How the hell is this our fault?"

"Do ya _seriously_ not know?" Jen asked, sounding disbelieving. "Like, for real?"

"No, we've just been acting stupid for funsies," Sam drawled, deeply sarcastic. Jen put her hands on her hips and frowned, puffing out one cheek in annoyance at his response.

"Your digimon are the reason the digital world's fucked up, mates," Eli said casually, rubbing his nose idly, like he wasn't dropping some heavy ideas. "Or, more specifically, I guess they're the reason it's not fixed yet? Semantics and shit."

"What?"  
That was from Meghan, but it could have been from anyone.

"If the digimon's world was like it was supposed to be," Jen said, twirling a bit of her hair around her finger, "then there wouldn't be cracks, and if there weren't cracks, there wouldn't be any digimon coming through."

"And it's totally outside the realm of possibility," Peter said, "that it's your digimon who are the problem?"

"Yes, actually! Ours came through to apprehend yours!" Ryan said, like this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Great at their jobs, aren't they," Sam said, looking sidelong at the others, and then over his shoulder at the fight, which had started up again-- but with somewhat less vigor. "Fifteen years late."

"Because it'd be so easy to hunt down five digimon in a city when you're a little puffball for most of that fifteen years, yeah?" Jen said. "And when you're not even sure they're here in the first place?"

"You keep saying that they're criminals, that they're refugees -- which, by the way, not the same thing," Peter said, frowning-- he was more talking to himself than to anyone else, until he looked up. "What did they _do_?"

Eli was the one who answered, in terribly eloquent manner.  
"They're like living backup drives for the corruption thing trying to destroy the digital world, dude. They're the reason their world's fucked sideways."

Any further discussion was cut off by the fact that they had to scatter when Frekimon, thrown by Malakhimon's Holy Charge, came skidding towards them.

 

***

This was not how Ratamon envisioned this going, he thought, as he watched from a very safe distance.

How he had pictured it was that Meramon would cause a little havoc, he'd draw that last damn one out, and his job would be a nice easy downward slide from there.  
That was, obviously, not how it actually worked out. Admittedly, he kind of _figured_ it wouldn't be that easy, but hey, he could always dream, right?

As it was... he had faith in the team of five-- he figured the worst that might come out of this might be some bruised egos and some wounds to lick. Worse things could happen, and chances were good that the humans would intervene if anything got too scary, but...

Ugh.  
It had been such a pain in the ass to lure that stupid Meramon through, too...

He twitched his big feathery ears to shake water off of them, and with one last look, he turned his back to where the humans and their digimon were fighting.

He'd figure it out later.

 

***

Lightning flashed overhead, followed soon after by the crack of thunder, and for the second time, the fighting lulled.

Not a single digimon on the battlefield didn't look worse for the wear. Both Doctorimon and Hokkaimon's coats were marred by dark bloody stains soaking through the fabric. Frekimon had bloody gashes along her shoulder and across her muzzle; half of one of Himamon's ears was torn off. Malakhimon's wings looked like more than a few feathers had been torn out, where Corymon had noticable tears and rips in the membranes of hers. Ibexmon was doing a pretty good job of hiding a limp in one of his hind legs, while parts of Banshemon's robes were torn and burned.

All eight digimon stood their ground in the wreckage, breathing heavily, nobody wanting to back down or surrender, but the rain was getting worse, and they were wearing down-- to say nothing of what the humans had to think over.

Well, at least the rain was keeping the fire under control. Ish. Kind of.

Sirens were flashing, police lights strobing.

"Let's go!" Meghan was the first to yell, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Ibexmon! Let's go home!"

"We can't back down now," Peter said, looking pointedly over at the humans. "Not with--"

"Oh, fucking _stuff it_ ," Xander spat. "If we had just booked it like I had wanted to--"

"Guys, _don't_ ," Natalie snapped.

Ibexmon snorted and tried to paw against the ground with one hoof, but he stumbled slightly as he lost his balance. He looked over his shoulder at Meghan-- and in that moment where he wasn't looking, Hokkaimon started creeping forward.

Luckily, Meghan _did_ see this, and she bolted for Ibexmon, running in between Hokkaimon and Ibexmon, arms outstretched as if to block the attack, or maybe make herself look bigger.  
Even more luckily, Hokkaimon stumbled to a stop, his toothy grin faltering slightly.

"No! We're going home!" Meghan yelled, standing her ground resolutely.

"What are you doing?" Ibexmon asked from behind her.

It was hard to tell if she was answering her partner, or still just going off, when she spoke again. "This is _stupid_! We're going home before we break _something else_!"

"She's right," Doctorimon said, looking around. "We're doing more harm than good at this point." He looked at his own allies, and pointedly then at Malakhimon, Hokkaimon, and Himamon, as if to say _you're not exempt_.

"Aren't you lot always doing that?" Hokkaimon muttered, but Himamon shook her head at him.

"Not now, Hokkaimon," she said quietly. "Loathe as I am to admit it, they're right."

There was a heavy pause yet again. Lightning cracked overhead once again, and there was a brief pause wherein Ryan, Eli, and Jen conferred with each other. Their digimon stepped back so they could be privy to this, but did not take their eyes off of their opponents.

In flashes of multicoloured light, one by one, the three opposing digimon returned to their rookie forms. It seemed like it had been a long time coming, with how drained they looked once they settled back into their default shapes.

Ryan and his group didn't say anything that they could hear. They knelt beside their partners, spoke quietly, and then minimized them into their respective D-Rives, before they took off as a group, running back down the alley they had come from.

"Mother of shit," Xander hissed, dragging a hand backwards through his wet hair. "This is so fucked."

Understatement of the century.

One by one, their own digimon reverted to their rookie forms, all breathing heavily, all looking like they had seen better days. They ran to inspect their partners, who were bleeding and bruised and scratched up, but it seemed that changing forms had undone a lot of the worse damage that they had sustained.

 

***

Once their partners were safely minimized and they had managed to slip away from the scene, they began what felt like the thousand-mile trek back to their vehicles-- and exactly the conflict you might expect to happen, was happening.

"We should have just left," Xander said, complaining to himself more than to anyone else. "We could have left the easy way, but no."

Natalie was trudging along, leading the way; she and Meghan were trying to make small talk, and Sam was bringing up the back in silence, but two voices predominated.

"Will you stop complaining for two seconds?" Peter sniped.

"Well, I mean, considering it's partially your fault that we got stuck in a eight-digimon pileup street fight--"

"And we know a hell of a lot more now than we did--"

"At what fuckin' cost!?" Xander stopped in the middle of walking, rounding on Peter, and the entire group stopped as well. "Every goddamn person with a camera and a shred of sense recorded that! Like hell are we going to be able to pretend we're not involved with this shit anymore!"

"Oh my god can we not do this," Sam groaned, feeling his body tense up even more than it already was.

"Just because you want to go back to putting your head in the sand and pretending none of this matters to you doesn't mean it doesn't matter," Peter said, his eye twitching in irritation. "Just because _you_ want to be left alone and pretend that you're not involved it doesn't mean you get to opt out of--"

"Guys," Meghan said, "can we please not do this, we're all really tired and stressed out and--"

"Of what? Excuse me for not being thrilled at the idea of being hunted down like fucking animals over some _wack-ass bullshit_ , but hey, now we know what they fuckin' think of us, so hey, it's all better now! Totally undoes the burning fucking building!"

"Guys," Natalie said, her voice slightly raised.

"You _could_ try actually doing something productive with this information, instead of just whining about it. Or would that be too much of a goddamn imposition on your free time?" Peter wasn't as loud as Xander, but his tone was downright acidic.

" _Guys._ "

"Don't fuckin' talk to me about being _productive_!"

" _GUYS!_ " Natalie practically yelled, and the group fell quiet as they all turned to look at her. "Will the both of you shut the hell up and stop going at each other's throats for _five seconds_!?"  
She was practically seething, and she calmed down only a little bit as she continued. "I know, you're stressed, we're all fucking _stressed_ , but neither of you is helping! Right now I don't want to babysit a couple of grown men, I want to figure out what where we're supposed to go from here, not _whose fault it is that we're here in the first place_!"

Both Xander and Peter stared at her, and she realized belatedy that both Meghan and Sam were doing the same, and she sighed heavily.  
"Look. We're all tired. Can we just reconvene later when we've all had the time to relax?"

"She's right," Meghan said. "Let's just-- deal with this later, okay?"

"Fine," Xander said stiffly; Peter said nothing, only nodded with lips pressed thin.

There were a lot of questions to be asked, and all of them were swirling around in their heads, and all of them came back to one central question: were they telling the truth? And if so, what did that mean for them?

"Gotta admit this isn't how I planned my day to go," Sam remarked to himself, shaking his head.

 

***

From her balcony, a young woman could see the glow of the fire and the smoke from downtown. Of course, a lot of people could see it from their houses-- she wasn't special in this regard, but...

"You think it's a digimon?" she said, asking over her shoulder. Standing inside, past the sliding doors and watching through the glass, was her best friend.

"Undoubtedly," he said, placing a blunt-clawed paw on the glass.

"I guess it being a grease fire that got out of hand is totally out of the question."

"Trust me on this one."

"It seems like they're getting worse," she said, then turned to look at her friend. "You're _sure_ you don't want to go?" She smirked, rolling her eyes. She didn't want to get involved any more than he did; the question was a sarcastic one. "Go out? Make some friends? Get our ass beat up and down the street a few times?"

"It'd be worse if I did," he said seriously, shaking his head. "Any help I could give would be undone by the damage it would do."

"I know, I know. I'm just giving you shit." She sighed, leaning forward on the railing. She couldn't help but feel that he was being a bit paranoid about it, and he seemed to realize this, because he spoke up.

"If I showed myself, I'd be found, and if I was found, everything would be several times more fucked than it already is."

"Yeah, I know. You're not gonna see me complaining about it, I sure as hell don't want to get involved." She shugged, shaking her head as she walked back inside, reaching down to pat him as she passed. "You don't have to be so serious all the time. Brooding in the dark, talking all cryptically."

He snorted, shaking his head. "I have to get my fun from somewhere," he said, taking one last look out at the city before turning around and following her.


	11. Episode 11: Come Right Out and Say It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! One more down!
> 
> The contest is officially closed to entries; I'll be announcing the winners in the next couple days over on the site (recon.digimonreset.com), tumblr (digimonreconnect.tumblr.com), and dA (digimonreconnect.deviantart.com) !
> 
> No real 'fight scene' in this chapter, but there's lots of plot and character and info, so I hope it keeps your attention anyway. :U

Sam groaned as he sat back in his chair, running a hand backwards through his hair.   
It was coming on seven AM, and he still hadn't slept yet from the night before. Huge digimon fights certainly had a way of igniting the adrenaline and getting the mind racing-- or maybe that was the energy drinks? The empty aluminum cans littered around his computer station were a fine testament to that. HE WAS DOING JUST FINE THANKS FOR ASKING.

The point was: last night had been the Meramon fight, and Sam was still awake and working away at his computer desk.

"Still?" Gelermon said, stretching out and looking over at him. She, unlike him, had actually gotten some sleep-- mostly on-and-off naps, cracking her eyes open every now and again to check whether or not her partner had actually gone to sleep yet.

"Awake again?" Sam said, not looking away from his computer. "Can you toss me a--"

"If you say another energy drink, I'm going to literally toss it, directly at your head, in hopes it knocks you out, because there's a nonzero chance that the next one will be the one to vibrate you off the mortal coil," Gelermon said, before Sam could even finish his sentence. She had been saving that one, apparently.

"I was going to say bottle of water," he said, "but that would work too."

Gelermon snorted as she pulled open the door of the minifridge at the foot of Sam's bed, grabbing a bottled water out of the door and walked over, passing it over instead of lobbing it as she had so threatened.   
"You're not still worked up about that shit, are you?" she asked, peering at the screen as she stood next to his chair.

"I have never, in my life, stopped being worked up," Sam replied flatly, cracking open the bottle of water and taking a swig of it. "You should know that."

"Right," Gelermon said, "I'm just waiting for the day you explode."

"Any day now. I can feel it. Though maybe that's the caffeine buzz."

Ever since he and Gelermon had gotten home, he had been throwing himself full-force into the D-Rive with an intensity that he hadn't quite managed to muster since the initial excitement wore off.   
He still wasn't stupid enough to plug it into his main computer, which meant one of his less-important laptops was the test dummy of the day.

The more he looked into this stupid thing, though, the less sense it made. He almost felt like it was deliberately, actively fucking with him. Every time he made headway into digging anything useful out of the files it dumped to his computer, said computer began to hang up if not outright crash-- and when he got it running smoothly again, the file it dumped was different. There was no consistency-- sometimes he could pick his way through data for hours before it started hanging up, and sometimes it was like hitting a brick wall inside of ten minutes.

He half wondered if the stupid thing was _deliberately_ fucking with him. Sure, it was a kind of out there idea to think that the D-Rive could _deliberately_ do anything, but at this point, he wasn't going to discount anything.

He was also doing a fantastic job of not really looking into the actual contents of what what's-his-guts had said about corruption and backup drives and all that shit.

...

An idea struck him.

"Hey, Gelermon," he said, looking over his shoulder as he dumped one more copy of the file. "I want to try something. Can I minimize you for a second?"

"I get the feeling this is going to be a horrendously bad idea," Gelermon said, practically able to sense it in the air. There was a moment of silence, before she grinned. "I'm in."

Sam disconnected the D-Rive from the laptop, and minimized Gelermon into it.   
For all he had experimented with it, he had never tried dumping the file with Gelermon minimized into it-- he rarely had her minimized up here in his room at all.

When he plugged the device back into his computer, he dumped the file once again, and with the press of the D-Rive's button, Gelermon re-emerged.

"What? Is that it?" she asked as Sam disconnected his D-rive from the computer. She watched as he opened the first file-- the one he had dumped immediately before minimizing her; it came up with the same error message as usual. "I was expecting a lot more, honestly."

"Did you feel anything?"

"No?" Gelermon said, slightly confused as to what Sam was getting at. "I mean, it felt a little tinglier than usual, but I figure that was just the fact that it was actually connected to--"

As she spoke, Sam attempted to open the second file, and Gelermon was immediately silenced-- not least of all because of the _unholy screeching_ that began emitting from the computer.

It was the most spectacular crash Sam had ever seen in his _entire life_. We're talking _legitimately surprised that the laptop did not begin smoking_.   
The screeching continued for a good fifteen solid seconds like the vengeful spirits of every 20-year-old printer on the planet; in this span of time, the screen lit up in a torrent of symbols and colours. Windows popped up and closed of their own accord, bands of pixels stuck and un-stuck themselves, and then--

And then it shut down, unceremonious and sudden, like the battery had been pulled out of it.

"Well _that's_ real fuckin' fascinating," Gelermon drawled, eyebrow quirked.

"Ain't it just," Sam said, sitting back and folding his arms. Gelermon peered over at him.

"You're not sleeping anytime soon, are you."

"Nnnnnnope."

 

***

It'd be fair to say that everyone learned a valuable lesson, now that the cruel light of day was shining bright and the news stations had gotten a hold of the footage.   
That lesson was 'if you want to keep the fact that there are monsters up in the city under wraps, don't start a fight in the middle of the street with nine-later-eight monsters'.

Not a terribly _useful_ life lesson for the rest of us, no, but that's beside the point.

Yes indeed, if they had ever planned to keep things under wraps, that goal had neatly been shot to pieces. Smaller amounts of damage, minor incidents... those could kind of be brushed off, more or less. The whole, building in downtown going up in flames, thing? ... a little harder to ignore. Sure, there were no good pictures of _Meramon_ \-- but pretty much from the moment the digimon had evolved up to champion level, there were more than enough pictures and videos floating around of the fight. The news was going wild, the _populace_ was going wild...   
It seemed that all bets were off-- and rest assured, a certain strain of enterprising people _were_ actually making bets.

Yes, Peter knew this last point for a fact, because he had the pathological inability to keep his nose out of things, and he was looking for what was being said, now that the news had had the chance to disseminate.

The only upside he could find was that nobody really seemed to think twice about the humans that had been nearby throughout the monster fight. The monsters themselves were much more interesting than the humans trying not to get their eyebrows burned off, and as a result, none of the photo and video evidence lingered too long on them.

Look, you have to look for the small blessings, okay?

And anyway, there were other things to deal with.

"I-- yeah," Peter said, cradling his phone between his shoulder and his ear. "Yes, I know. Tomorrow, right. I'll be there." He was typing away at his desk. His mother had called, which was always a recipe for-- well, a given value of fun. That is to say, if your given value of fun was _the literal opposite of fun_ , then yeah, it was tons of it.

Initially, when he had seen it was his mother calling, he had been momentarily afraid-- had she seen him in the shaky footage? He knew he was unique in the group as being the only one who had managed to, for all these years, keep his digimon a secret from his family.

(Admittedly, this hadn't been hard-- his mother was forgetful and distracted on the best of days, and Wispmon had been so very, very easy to hide. He had -- grading on a scale -- lucked out.)

"Right. I know, I don't work tomorrow, I already made su--... yes, I know," he said, desperately wanting to be having any other conversation, but his tone was even. "Look, I have to get ready for work." Pause. "Right. I'll see you then."

He ended the call, and sat back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. "She's going to forget," he said to himself, sighing.

"She remembers sometimes," Banmon said, poking her head up from inside her laundry basket hidey-hole.

"Seventy-to-thirty she forgets, then," Peter ammended dully, tilting his head back and looking up at the ceiling.

"That's still not a hundred percent," Banmon tried, but to be honest, even she wasn't sure why she was trying to give the benefit of the doubt here. "I'm sure it's just hard on her, too."

Peter sighed through his nose as he looked back down-- his eyes drifted from his computer screen, to his D-Rive sitting on his desk, and then finally over at Banmon. He nodded once, at least acknowledging what she had said, even as he moved the subject along himself. "At least I won't have to bring you in a bag this time." Beat. "Assuming you want to come, that is."

"Of course I'll come. Why wouldn't I?"

"I just didn't want to assume," he said, looking back over at the little device. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, then looked over at Banmon. "You holding up alright? You've seemed a little bit shaken."

Indeed, she had been a bit more withdrawn than usual-- and honestly, if she got any more withdrawn, she was liable to straight up implode.

"I'm not... a fan of the fighting," Banmon said, stating the obvious, then looked over at him. "I'll be fine."

"If you say so," he said, not quite believing her.

 

***

_my parents haven't said anything either,_ Natalie said in the group chat. Peter had just remarked on his own mother's total lack of notice. _i have no idea if they're somehow unaware or if they're just waiting for a dramatic moment to talk to me about the health risks of monsters._

 _i_ wish _my mother didnt notice :/_ Meghan lamented. _she saw a tiny glimpse of me in the footage and practically exploded. every time i go downstairs she goes off again about me running off into danger... :/_

Xander snorted. He was laying on his futon, one hand behind his head and the other holding his phone.

 _how the tits did she recognize you?_ Xander typed in. _i watched that shit too, and it's practically impossible to make out anything between, you know, the fire and the monsters._

 _my dyed hair? the fact that ibexmon is still pretty recognizably oremon? idk for sure_ Meghan responded.

 _pffft. fuck that. sounds like your mom is just crazy_ Xander replied.

_it's not that!! she's just worried, you know?_

_It's not the least dangerous thing we could be doing._ That was Peter, if the proper punctuation and capitalization didn't give him away. _Though I don't agree, I can still see why she might be concerned._

Xander almost replied with something about 'cool idea: shut up', but he decided against it. He snorted, setting his phone down as the conversation ticked on without him. He had really only opened his phone to confirm that the plans he had were still a-go.   
He glanced over to where Desmon was reclining in her little hammock-net.

"Hey. Desmon. Question."

"That's a dangerous way to start a conversation. Sup?

"You're a girl." Beat. "Kind of." Another beat. "What the fuck do girls like?"

"Cash settlements and mozzarella sticks," Desmon said, with shocking immediacy. Xander paused, sitting up slightly.

"Follow up question: why the fuck did I ask you?"

 

Desmon snickered. "An excellent follow-up question. At least I didn't say 'cars and money'."

" _Christ._ "

 

***

The entire afternoon, Peter's mind was anywhere but on his job.

Well. He _usually_ mentally clocked out somewhere around 30 minutes into his shifts, but this was even more than usual. He felt like his head was in a fog, and he vaguely contemplated the idea of seeing if he could be replaced by one of those custom-order coffee machines that they had around campus at Northwest without sacrificing the efficiency of his job any.

Probably.

Between thinking about the fight, the news coverage of the fight, Banmon's concern, the interpersonal bullshit with the rest of the group... he had a lot to think about, and the brain-rotting process of his job was actually kind of a godsend. The autopilot was strong in this one, today.

Right up until he came to a grinding halt.

"Iced tea for--," he began reading off, and he stumbled. It wasn't a terribly busy day, so there were only so many people this drink could be for, and when he looked out... well. If it hadn't been less than twenty-four hours past, he likely wouldn't recognize the face at all, but sure as anything, he laid eyes on the girl who had been partnered with the red panda digimon just last night. "Jen."

Was there a single goddamn person in this stupid city who didn't come here for their drinks?   
(It's almost like he worked at a very well-known cafe in the university district, where a lot of people around their age frequented even during the summer because it was where half of everything that wasn't downtown _was_. Weird.)

She was looking down at her phone until he called her name, so she didn't see his awkward moment of realization, for which he was grateful. He momentarily wondered if he was mistaken, right until he saw her furrow her brow and puff out her cheek in obvious thought.

"Have I seen you before?" she asked as she approached the bar, peering at Peter's face, and he fixed his face into its usual flat expression.

"I've worked here for the past year and a half," he said evenly, going for a technical truth. "If you frequent the Lotus, there's a substantial chance you've seen me before." There was a nonzero chance they _had_ seen each other before, after all, but he wasn't fooling either of them.

(Though now that he thought about it, he thought he saw her face in here pretty regularly...)

She didn't quite lunge over the bar, but she did lean forward to get a closer look, and Peter leaned backwards in kind because, hey, personal bubble. "Yoooou were at the fight last night, weren't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said after a moment's worth of pause, and putting her tea on the counter.

"Uh-huh," Jen said, rolling her eyes and picking her tea up. She stood up straight and took a sip of her drink. "Chill, dude, I'm not going to start a fight with you in the middle of a cafe or nothin'."

"You wouldn't be the first if you did," Peter deadpanned, unable to stop himself, and Jen raised an eyebrow, huffing a little bit of a laugh.

"So which one was yours?" she asked, obviously meaning _which digimon_. Aside from the obvious connection of Natalie and Raumon, courtesy of Ryan, it was easy to not remember which monster went with which twenty-something.

"I decline to answer."

"You're unfathomable, aren't 'ya? Here I am, just tryin' to make some small talk, and you gotta give me the hardass act." She puffed out a cheek in mock indignation. Her tone was casual and conversational-- and she had the slight inflection in her voice that led him to half expect her to end a sentence with _eh_.   
(Just say it, Peter. Canadian. She sounded Canadian. Was this relevant to anything? Not really. Did he notice it anyway, in a way he might not have when they were in the middle of a -- pardon the pun -- firefight? Yes.)

Eh, no point in pretending he really didn't know what she was talking about if she wasn't buying it from the get-go. "You kind of tried to kill my partner last night," Peter said, keeping his voice low. "I think I can be forgiven for not being particularly generous about that."

"It's nothing personal, you know?" Jen said offhandedly-- flippantly. "I don't have anything against _you_ or nothin'."

"Just my best friend."

"Yeah!" Jen said, then paused. "You know, that sounded better in my head."

"I imagine it did," Peter said, curling his lip slightly-- just ever-so-slightly.

"Well, my point stands. It's nothin' against you," she said, shrugging one shoulder and turning. "I'll see you later, I'm sure!"

And like that, she was on her way out the door.   
For a few delirious moments, Peter considered flagging her back down and demanding she explain herself, and what she knew, and what she had meant when she had talked about their digimon--   
But at that moment, a gaggle of teenage girls entered the café, and he had no choice but to let it go. He sighed through his nose and watched her go.

It definitely gave him food for thought all evening-- as if he didn't already have enough to think about.   
He didn't say anything to the rest of the group about it just yet.

When Sam, at around half past seven, messaged the group asking if they could hold a minor meeting at anyone's place (" _nothing catastrophically bad just easier to demo than explain_ "), he figured he'd get the chance to say it anyway.

 

***

"Honestly, I'm surprised it didn't catch fire," Sam said, tugging idly at the brim of his cap.   
He, Natalie, and Peter were seated on Peter's living room floor; Sam had just finished explaining the first pass of his experiment with the D-Rive, while their respective digimon watched on from a comfortable seat on the couch.

Yes, the digimon were on the couch while the humans sat on the floor.

It was now half-past eight, that same evening. Ian had just left for work and Peter had just gotten home, which meant that he had the most freedom to invite people over right now. Xander had -- to the surprise of _nobody ever_ \-- declined the offer to come, and Meghan had also declined, which struck them as a bit odd, but they figured it wouldn't be hard to catch them up. Sam just wanted an audience; neither Natalie nor Peter could deny the sneaking suspicion that the primary reason he had actually _come_ was that he was the one who was calling the meeting.

"What state is the computer in now?" Natalie asked, furrowing her brow.

"See, I'm ahead of you," Sam said, practically bubbling over despite the fact that he looked like he hadn't slept in a while (spoilers: he hadn't)-- he was clearly excited to have the chance to explain. Peter had seen him get something like this before, when they had been exchanging theories before the Strigimon incident, but this was even more so. He sat back, watching.   
Sam turned around; he had brought a messenger bag with him, and from within it, he pulled a slightly beat-up looking laptop. "I actually experimented a little bit with it, and I figured it'd be easier to show you than to try and explain it."

"Oh no," Gelermon groaned, anticipating what was about to happen.

"It's going to be loud, isn't it?" Banmon murmured in worry, looking nervously between Sam and Gelermon.

"That's certainly a word for it," Sam said. "You might want to cover your ears." All in attendance followed his advice, and he pulled the laptop open and pressed down the power button.   
They immediately understood what he meant when he said he was surprised it didn't catch fire. Just as it had the first night, the computer began screeching and glitching out immediately; this again lasted for maybe fifteen seconds before the computer powered down of its own accord.

"Should make that your wakeup alarm," Raumon said, uncovering his ears nervously. "It'd get you up right quick."

"Never," Gelermon said, grumpily, "again."

" _Christ_ ," Natalie said, looking to Sam. "Couldn't just leave that to the imagination, could you?" she said, but on the other side of her, Peter looked more thoughtful.

"I swear I've heard that sound before," Peter said, stroking his chin, but saying that was enough for Natalie to get the hint, and she practically bolted straight upright as she exclaimed.

"That was the noise our D-Rives made when our digimon first evolved!"   
There may as well have been a lightbulb floating above her head.

"Okay, I'm not going crazy, then," Sam said, and again, his excitement was palpable. "But if I wanted to just share that, I could have spammed the group chat with a noise file appropos of nothing, just to fuck with you guys."

"Truly, I feel blessed that you didn't," Peter said flatly, arms folded and eyebrow raised in amusement.

"Check it, though," he said, pulling his D-Rive and a cord out of the messenger bag. He pried the cover off of the little USB port on the side of the D-Rive, connected the cord, and plugged it into the side of the laptop.   
When he reached for the power button, everyone except for Sam and Gelermon instinctively covered their ears.

However... the computer started up like normal, quiet except for the buzzing of the worn-out fan and the whirr of a too-old laptop resenting the idea of starting up.   
"If I were to pull the D-Rive back off," Sam said as everyone cautiously removed their hands from their ears, "it'd go right back to fuck-up town. I can show you if--"

"NO," Natalie said a bit too forcefully as Sam reached for the cord, but the self-satisfied look on his face was evidence enough that he was just fucking with them.

"I'm pretty sure that this thing is functionally bricked, otherwise," Sam said, watching as the computer booted up, slowly but totally normally, "but it was pretty much just a scrapper anyway, so I'm not too hurt about losing it."

Peter found himself distinctly glad that it was Sam, with junky computers to spare, who had been the one who went digging around like this.

"So," Natalie said, speaking out loud as she was swiping her thumb across her phone, obviously copying it down to send for the benefit of the absent duo, "you plugged it in with Gelermon minimized, and it does _that_ if the D-Rive isn't connected."

"Good, you _were_ listening," he said; Natalie and Peter both chose to ignore his snide sarcasm, having gotten to the point where they realized he didn't mean much by it. "Anyway. I'd been thinking a lot about what the douchebag brigade said, and I think that may be related to it."

Peter sat up a bit straighter, paying more attention.

"I mean-- I don't think I'm going to be rocking anyone's world if I say that the digimon are probably at least vaguely technological in nature," Sam said, speaking quickly. "I mean, come on-- _Digi_ mon, _Digital_ World, the fact that they explode into pixels, it's not exactly rocket science here to make the supposition--"

"Stay on track," Gelermon prompted, even though the dog would likely have bitch-slapped (heh) anyone else who interrupted Sam in such a way.

"Right. Anyway-- the file that dumps when Gelermon was in it. I can't exactly be sure -- not without checking another digimon outside of our little group here, but somehow I feel like the douchebag brigade," and yes, he was still going with that nickname, "wouldn't be too excited about letting me give it a whirl-- but if you asked me to imagine in bluntest terms what corruption in something digital looked like..."   
He gestured at the laptop.

There was a brief but heavy silence as that sank in.

It was a heavy thing to really accept. Sure, they had all heard what they had been told, but that didn't mean it was a _real thing_. But...

"... do you suppose," Raumon said, tapping his beak, "that that might be why we don't remember anything?"

"What do you mean?" Banmon asked as she, and everyone else in attendenace, turned to look at him.

"Well," Raumon said, "they -- Shitomon and Lurumon and Hulimon I mean -- they seemed to remember us, but unless anyone's lying about what they know-- and I don't think anyone is -- we're still in the dark. Maybe that's why?"

"So... it's true, then?" Banmon said, clearly frowning, even without a visible mouth.

Gelermon seemed less concerned-- and in fact, a bit more dismissive. "Some world-destroying corruption this must be," she snorted, "if all it can do is knock a few memories loose. Come on. Weak."   
Banmon looked down at her hands and sighed.

 

***

"Sounds like they're having fun," Meghan said, scrolling through the messages on her phone. Natalie was practically liveblogging the information they were finding out, and Meghan was reading out the messages for Xander's benefit.

The two of them were sitting on the hood of Xander's car in the growing-ever-darker parking lot of his apartment building; they were just about to part ways, but they were taking advantage of the temperate evening while they had the chance.   
Their having spent the evening hanging out was the cause for their absence (rather, Meghan's-- again, Xander probably wouldn't have gone even if you had paid him). It had been Meghan's idea, unsurprisingly; they had simply met up at the mall nearest to them and had roamed. This had eventually culminated in a particularly heated two-player round of an ancient first-person shooter game in the arcade.

(Meghan was a significantly better shot than Xander was expecting; she had won by a narrow margin, and Xander insisted that it was because his gun was a busted piece of shit. The cabinet _was_ ancient, so it was a viable possibility, but the truth of the matter shall forever be lost to the ages.)

This was not the first time digimon had entered the conversation. It felt like it was on everyone's minds; they had actually heard random people discussing it as they had passed. It was... stressful, to say the least, but it wasn't surprising that the subject had come back around. When Sam had asked about holding a flash meeting, they had figured it was something of the sort.

"What a pain in the dick that sounds like," Xander said, rolling his eyes pointedly as he leaned backwards, supporting himself on his hands. "Doesn't sound like we're missing much."

"Does it really not interest you at all?" Meghan said, setting her phone down next to her.

"It just honestly doesn't matter that much to me," Xander said with a shrug-- and the blunt answer surprised Meghan somewhat.

"I'm _guessing_ there's more to that than just you not being able to muster the give-a-fuck about your digimon?" she said, quirking an eyebrow, and Xander shrugged again.

"Basically the exact opposite of that, actually." When Meghan continued giving him a bemused look, he continued. "Look. far as I care, Desmon could _literally_ be the mortal avatar for the dread god Cthulhu, but that's not gonna change the fact that turning her over to the asshole brigade is going to happen over my cold, dead body. I mean, you practically threw yourself in front of the fox dude for Oremon even with that bullshit about them secretly being fuckin' Satan spawn or whatever."   
He shrugged. "I'd rather not waste time trying to get to the bottom of shit when it's not going to help, and the alternative is we get in, take care of the monster shit, and be out of there before we get caught on the goddamn evening news again."

Meghan paused as she thought. "I guess I see your point," she conceded. "A bit blunt, but I suppose I can appreciate it."

Xander got the distinct impression, a second too late, that that sentence meant more than one thing.

Before he could commentate, Meghan stretched her arms above her head and slid off of the hood of Xander's car.   
"I should get going before my mother puts out a missing person alert or something."

Xander snorted, but nodded. "Yeah, I'd rather not deal with a suburban white housewife gettin' on my case."

Meghan's mother -- Meg herself had explained -- had very strong feelings on the digimon attacks-- and had spent most of her afternoon handwringing about it and wavering between worry and anger. She had related to Xander how she had actually had to show her D-Rive's deactivated radar (and explain what that meant) before she calmed down enough to not panic about Meghan heading out for this little excursion.   
(Which, frankly, Xander thought was bullshit, but considering he hadn't spoken to his parents in years, he realized he may not exactly be the model to turn to.)

Meghan huffed a little bit of a laugh. "I'll see you later," she said over her shoulder as she crossed over to where she had parked her own car. Xander stayed where he was, watching; he could see the flash of orange light as Oremon materialized out of her D-Rive the moment he could appear in the shotgun seat. Oremon folded his arms, which was basically his defualt stance, but he at least nodded in acknowledgement as Meghan tossed a little wave out the window as they left.

A familiar burst of blue light accompanied Desmon appearing on the car hood beside him.

"Way to go, you charmer, you," Desmon said slyly, and he could practically hear the grin in her voice.

"Show me where I asked for your opinion."

"Right around the point you said you'd still kick ass over me if I were a Lovecraftian horror. My opinion is now valid in all circumstances."

Xander shoved her off the hood of his car.

 

***

Much later, long after everyone had cleared out and normal, sane people had gone to bed, not everyone had the luxury of being asleep.

Peter didn't realize how late it was until he heard the muffled sound of Ian getting home around four in the morning, and the accompanying shafts of light that poured under his door.   
It had been one of those nights where he wasn't laying awake by any means, but any sleep he got was spotty at best. Any time he closed his eyes, he had no way of knowing if thirty seconds, thirty minutes, or three hours had passed by the time he opened them back up.

One of _those_ nights.

He forced a sigh through his nose. At least he didn't have work tomorrow-- today? Today.

Not that that was a blessing. He wasn't looking forward to-- well. Let's be real, he probably wasn't actually going to see his mother. She'd either forget or flake out on him, and he'd be left going to the cemetery alone. He didn't even particularly _like_ going, but the fact that he was the only one who consistently _did_ was still... frustrating.

He sat up, watching as the lights in the living room shut off again as Ian retreated into his own room, likely to go collapse into sleep.   
Peter slid out of bed, doing his best to keep quiet so as not to disturb Banmon-- which, as it turned out, might not have been necessary. He looked at her usual hiding place in her designated laundry basket, but he saw no bundle of beige fabric and smoke.   
Well. That was slightly disconcerting.

He grabbed his D-Rive off of his bedside table and began opening the radar, practically out of instinct.   
The little glowing shape resembling Banmon's head was still smack in the middle; off to the side, he saw the little Ratamon dot cut across a corner of the radar. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting.

He cast a look up at the window. Because they lived in the basement part of the duplex, the window was high on the wall-- it was at ground level from the outside. The view, as a result, wasn't terribly impressive, not least of all because of the tree that took up a goodly amount of said view.

... _right._

Not even bothering with his glasses, Peter pulled on a t-shirt and a proper pair of shorts over his boxers before he carefully crept out into the living room, D-Rive still in hand. Ian was probably already asleep, and he slept like the fucking dead, so he wasn't terribly worried about waking him up, but old habits die hard. He slipped a pair of sandals on before he very gingerly made his way outside. He circled around through the grass to the tree outside his window, and if he looked _really_ hard, he could see tan fabric hidden in the boughs.   
(He couldn't deny the sense of relief he felt when his hunch was right.)   
(He also couldn't deny that maybe he should have put his glasses on, but it was too late now.)

"Hey," he said quietly once he was immediately under the tree. Though he wasn't looking up, the sudden rustle of leaves even though there was very little wind would seem to indicate that Banmon was given quite a start.

"I didn't know you were awake," Banmon's voice drifted down out of the trees after a second.

"Only in the broadest sense of the word," Peter admitted, leaning against the tree and sighing. He felt like shit; he was awake only by the process of elimination. "You doing alright?"

There was another moment before Banmon answered. In this moment, she poked her head out of the branches and looked around, making sure there were no onlookers, before she drifted down, floating next to her partner.   
"I don't know," she said.

Peter hummed quietly, but didn't push.

"I--" Banmon said without prompting, shaking her head. She paused, trying to find words, and she looked at Peter, worry on her face. "Do you think we're doing the right thing?"

"What do you mean?"

"If this really is all our fault," she said, choosing her words carefully. "If there's all this that we don't remember. If we are what they say we are, then... do you really think we're doing the right thing?"

Peter frowned.

"I mean-- I mean, you heard what the girl said," Banmon said, and Peter had kind of forgotten that Banmon -- who had been in his D-Rive at the time -- would have heard his conversation with Jen. "They don't have anything against you. It's just... us." She sighed. "You could stop worrying about all of this, and I'm sure it would be better for-- for the digital world, if you just--"

"That's not going to happen," Peter said, cutting her off before she could even finish the thought. He looked at his D-Rive, held loosely in one hand. There absolutely _had_ to be more to it-- these little doohickeys were proof positive of that, as far as he was concerned.   
"Besides, if I decided to tap out now, then I'd be the biggest hypocrite in the world," he added, and Banmon laughed at least a little-- that was good. He looked over at her.

 

"I just-- if the corruption is the reason we don't remember anything," Banmon said, "then-- I just... I wonder what it is we did, and why-- why _us_."

"In the past fifteen years," Peter said, quirking an eyebrow, "you've been by far the gentlest, most sensitive individual I've ever known, human or otherwise. Either you were the same person, or that's not the person you are now."

Banmon paused, looking down at her hands.   
"I guess..." she sighed. "I just... don't know whether or not I want to know what happened. Or what might happen because of it."

Peter couldn't help himself:   
"I know." He sighed heavily. "But either way. Nothing's going to happen to you as long as I have any say in it."

They went quiet, allowing their thoughts to sit while they enjoyed the cool air of the early morning; the birds were beginning to start up, and Banmon cast a slightly nervous look up at the birds' nest in the tree she had been hiding in.

"Are you doing alright?" she asked after a little while, looking at Peter, and he looked slightly surprised for a moment that she asked. "I know you must be thinking about--"

"Yeah," he said, lifting and dropping one shoulder in a half-shrug and not letting her finish her sentence. "Wanna go back inside? Some sleep is better than none."

Banmon frowned, knowing full well that there was a lot on her partner's mind that he wasn't saying. "Alright."

 

***

Peter sighed heavily, looking down at his phone. He had slept, but not nearly enough; the shadows under his eyes stood as testament to that. It was early afternoon, now; the sun was shining, the birds are singing, and exactly as he had expected, his mother was nowhere to be found. He had been waiting by the gates for almost forty-five minutes, holding out hope, and said hope was starting to wear thin. In years past, he might have tried calling her or messaging her; now, he didn't bother trying.

"You know," he said, speaking to himself and the unseen audience of Banmon, safely minimized in his D-Rive, "I'm not sure why I even bother. Nobody would care if I didn't come."

He'd know, though.   
Dammit. He'd just go himself.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets as he crossed through the lines of stones and grave markers and tall, dark trees, his feet on autopilot.   
He came to a stop in front of the familiar marker, and he looked around. He was alone; it was a bright and sunny July day, nobody wanted to spend a day like this in a graveyard.

He held his D-Rive loosely in one hand, and he looked down at it, and then around himself. "Banmon, if you want to come out, you can. Nobody's going to see you."

There were a few seconds wherein Banmon hesitated, before she materialized in a burst of white light, and Peter looked sidelong at her, nodding. She nodded back.   
Peter sighed, sitting down in the dirt, and Banmon drifted down next to him, settling on the ground among the leaves and the scrubby grass. She curled up next to him, saying nothing but keeping him company for as long as he sat.

He wasn't sure how long he had been sitting there in silence when his D-Rive lit up. He had practically forgotten he was holding it.

He almost wanted to scream, but instead he muttered, "why _now_?"

He turned to look to the sky, and he could already see two flying shapes over the tops of the trees, and he sighed, minimizing Banmon, just in case.

 

***

"Blast Rings!"

The freak of the week (... wait, it was the second digimon attack that week. The freak of the day didn't have as nice a ring to it, though) was a large red eagle with huge curved black horns, name of Aquilamon.   
It was a weird, weird turn of affairs that they considered themselves lucky that Aquilamon had a bone to pick with them-- because it meant it was really easy to pull somewhere they wouldn't have as much of an audience at 1 in the afternoon. They were really desperate to avoid another scene if at all possible, for _whatever reason_.

Corymon had actually managed to lead it here-- a slightly wooded area that was, if memory served, near the cemetery. Here, Doctorimon was ready to head the eagle off.   
(After all, who would be hanging around in the cemetery on a day like this?)   
They had had to come up with the plan very quickly, and Xander hadn't been terribly enthused about it, but seeing as he was the one who had seen the emergent on his radar first...

Well, they made do.

"Black Stinger!" Corymon yelled, firing off blasts of energy from her tail stinger. They hit Aquilamon square in the chest, and the bird seized, the attack momentarily paralyzing it. It didn't fall out of the sky entirely, but it did dip in the air before it righted itself, but that few meters it fell were all Doctorimon needed.

"Black Bloom!"

Doctorimon hurled his rose like a dagger and it struck true, and Aquilamon growled as it fell to the ground, snapping a few tree branches in the process.

"Dirty tricks," Aquilamon growled. "Nothing more than I'd expect of filth like--"   
It didn't get to finish its insult, as it exploded into pixels.

Natalie came jogging through the trees as Corymon, with Xander clinging tight to her back, alighted down next to Doctorimon. "Well, that could have gone worse," Natalie said; Doctorimon nodded curtly.

"Not a fan of this passenger fighting thing," he remarked flatly, dusting himself off as he let go of the death grip he had on Corymon's mane.

"Like I'd let you fall," Corymon said cheerfully, and she began to glow as she reverted back to Desmon. Doctorimon followed suit. It hadn't been a terribly difficult encounter; the real problem had just been trying to lead it out here without being seen, but they had more or less succeeded.

This desire not to be seen was a big factor in the fact that that all in attendance nearly had a heart attack as they heard footsteps coming their way. Xander and Natalie prepared to minimize their digimon-- but they relaxed substantially when the familiar face of Peter came traipsing through the trees instead, with Banmon floating cautiously after him.

"Aw, he's late, missed all the fun," Xander said dryly, relaxing less than Natalie did.

"Shame," Desmon chimed in.

"Somehow," Peter said flatly, "I think I'll survive." He looked around, lips pressed tight until he spoke. "That was you, I take it?"

Natalie frowned, furrowing her brow-- she could sense something off, something about the stiffer than usual way in which Peter held himself, or maybe the shadows under his eyes that practically broadcasted that he was tired, or--   
Maybe the fact that he was here, even though she and Xander hadn't coordinated their makeshift plan in the group chat?

Raumon had the same thought, apparently. He stroked his beak in thought and furrowed his brow, but said nothing. He didn't need to, because there was another pair far too willing to speak up.

"Sure was," Xander said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"Am I needed here, or do you have it all under control?" Peter asked, looking to Natalie instead of Xander.

"What, are we interrupting your free time or something?" Xander interrupted anyway, raising an eyebrow. He very deliberately chose the words that Peter had snapped at him over mere days ago.   
Peter definitely noticed it, and he turned his gaze onto him. Instead of saying anything, he merely stared for a moment, an unspoken _are you done?_.   
Xander was slightly taken aback, and he curled his lip just slightly.   
"Hey, it was just a _question,_ " he said, voice dripping condescension, shrugging one shoulder.

"Dude, now may not be a good time," Natalie said cautiously, taking a half-step back; the tension was downright palpable, and Xander was doing something that would charitably called _making it worse_.

"Hey, if he's gonna give me shit for it, I'm gonna give him shit."

"You could _try_ not giving each other shit at all, you know," Natalie said, but she had the feeling that this was a fruitless endeavor.

"It's different," Peter said curtly, looking icily at Xander.

"Oh, I'm sure, seeing as your free time is more important than everyone else's," Xander cut back, confirming Natalie's suspicion that her attempts to de-escalate were useless. "Go on. Piss off, see how much I care."

Banmon squeaked ineffectually, every inch of her smoky body desperately broadcasting that she'd like nothing more than to not be here. Peter said nothing, nodding an acknowledgement to Natalie and he turned to leave, stiffly turning around to go back the way he came.

"Man," Desmon said, "he's really playin' up the ice queen bit today, isn't he?" She sounded at least a little bit more sympathetic, but that wasn't saying much-- sounding more sympathetic than Xander was not difficult.

Xander snorted. "Probably pissed that he's having to take time away from whatever the fuck he does with his spare time. Condescend to people about shitty music, probably. Cry me a river."

"Do you ever, like, turn that off, or do you just say whatever comes to mind?" Natalie asked out loud, looking at Xander with a quirked eyebrow.

"Mostly the latter option, yeah," Xander said. At least he was honest about it...?

Peter didn't seem to appreciate the honesty, though, as he had turned back around and was walking back, presumably to retaliate to Xander's comment.   
He looked like he was thinking what the best comeback would be-- what biting, laconic thing he could say to really cut Xander down to size.

Instead, he hauled off and lunged for Xander, swinging at his face with a closed fist.

It happened so quickly that even Peter himself didn't seem to see it coming, and he was the one _doing_ it. He had a few inches on Xander in height, yes, but Xander was significantly more solidly built, so the element of surprise was undoubtedly key in the relative success of this attack.

Desmon was, uncharacteristically, struck dumb.

"Peter--!" Banmon cried from behind, looking like she was about to cry.

"Oh my god--!" Natalie yelped, stumbling backwards a few feet and almost falling on her ass in her surprise; Raumon practically puffed up his feathers as he, too, jumped back.

Xander, though, didn't wait, immediately coming back with a swing of his own, having at least the decency to punch Peter in the stomach instead of the face. Wouldn't deck a guy with glasses in the face, at least! ... no, no, wait, yes he would. What's going to pass for lucky is the fact Peter's glasses they flew off his face when Xander's fist connected.

They began to exchange blows, but luckily, they didn't get far-- once the shock had worn off, their partners were quick to and intervene. (After all, if _they_ got in a scrap, that was one thing, but humans totally weren't supposed to be the ones fighting-- let alone with each other.)

"Xander!" Desmon yelled, flapping up and grabbing a hold of her partner's shoulders with her feet, and she leapt backwards, flapping and physically wrenching him back.

Banmon, too, intervened-- she threw her arms out, wrapping her hands around Peter's upper arms and pulling him back. Raumon bolted to pick Peter's glasses off the ground-- they were a little dirtier now than they had been, but luckily enough the worst damage they had sustained was a tiny bit of bend in one arm.

"Could you keep your mouth shut for _two seconds!?_ " Peter yelled, his cool officially gone. "Or is it _that_ hard for you to not hear your own voice!?"

"I'm not the one who suddenly fucking _psycho snapped_ over being called a hipster!" Xander spat back, glaring. He wrenched himself free of Desmon's grip, but he stood solid, and didn't try to lunge at Peter again. He rolled his shoulders, and Banmon slowly released Peter.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Peter snapped, gritting his teeth.

"Oh, _do enlighten me_ ," Xander said, making a terribly sarcastic, sardonic bow. Peter stared at him-- and said nothing.

Raumon cautiously approached Peter to hand over his glasses; he took them with a simple, tense nod. Then, without a word, he spun on his heel and walked away, not even waiting for Banmon.

"I--"

The little ghost visibly panicked.

"I'm sorry!" she cried, before taking off after her partner.

"What the hell was that," Desmon said, quiet and confused and shockingly sober of tone.

"I think you _may_ have struck a nerve," Raumon said matter-of-factly, stating the _blazingly obvious_.

Xander folded his arms and snorted derisively, but Natalie rounded on him.

"You realize he was probably here for a reason, right?" she said. "Like, did that occur to you at all?"

"So he's a creepy fucking hipster who hangs around near cemeteries, big whoop," Xander muttered, but Natalie fixed him with a hard stare, and he, entirely too belatedly, shut his mouth.

 

***

"You know, she would have been nineteen today," Peter said as he trudged back to the gravemarker he had been sitting at before... that uncomfortable digression. He didn't know why he was going back now -- but he felt like he had to leave on a better note than that.   
The way he spoke, it was like that little altercation hadn't happened at all.

"I'm sorry," Banmon said.

"About what?"

"Not-- that anything here is my fault, just... in general..." she trailed off as she drifted behind him, and he went quiet in thought again. "I don't know."

"You're fine," Peter said, and he meant it, no matter how distant his tone was.

He had always felt like there was _something_ to the fact that not even half a year after losing his sister, Wispmon had appeared in a little ball of cloth and smoke.

Even when he was six, he had quickly dismissed the idea that Wispmon was actually his little sister's ghost. Mariah had been loud and rambunctious and adventurous, while Wispmon had always been bashful and quiet and mild. Even a wild-eyed kid who, let's be real, didn't _entirely_ understand the full impact of what was going on could tell the difference.   
It didn't change the fact that for a long time, he had always felt there was _some_ kind of a connection-- a reason for it.

He still remembered eavesdropping on the conversation between the doctors and his parents, and how much he hadn't understood at the time; it had been a problem with her heart, and apparently they had known from the time she was born that she was likely to be a ticking time bomb, and...   
You know. It was just a lot, and his understanding as a six year old boy had been lacking at best. She had only been four.

(Maybe part of his obsession with finding out all of these _why_ and _how_ and _what_ was the manifestation of all this coming back out again, now that he really had the chance to understand Banmon had come to him.)

Or something like that, anyway.

...

He would never say it, but he was already feeling a pang of regret that he had lost his temper like that. He had always prided himself on his self-control, but...

He maintained that they had to work together. They were in this together for a reason. He was more convinced of that than ever, with all the new information they had recieved recently, but... dammit, dammit, _dammit_ , Xander just had to pick at that wound _today_. He _had_ to try and pick a fight, and...

"Do you want to go home?" Banmon asked quietly. Peter sighed, raising a hand to his cheek where Xander had punched him back. It was probably going to bruise.

He really only had himself to blame.

"Yeah. Fuck it, yeah."


	12. Episode 12: Hard Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm faiiiirly certain I don't have anything special that needs saying in front of this one. Weird.

"Poison Cobweb!"

Frekimon snarled with pain as she was assailed by the spray of poisonous mist, lifting her arms to protect her face. The flames around her wrists flickered; when the mist hit it, it formed a putrid greenish smoke that made everything five thousand times worse, but, hey, they were already in the industrial district, it's not like the smell in the air could get any worse, right?

"Terra Spear!" Ibexmon yelled, smashing his hooves down into the ground. Rocky spikes shot up into the underbelly of the giant spider they were in the middle of fighting, and it snarled with pain as it tumbled away, practically thrown by the force of the rocks.

Sam and Meghan kept well out of the way, D-Rives cluched tightly. It had barely been four days since Natalie and Xander had taken care of Aquilamon, and thus since Xander and Peter had come to blows. While any of them would be hard-pressed to say that there was a baseline of _normal monster appearances to days passed ratio_ , but it felt decidedly odd that there had been this many incidents this closely back-to-back, and with what little they knew now... well, it didn't put anyone's minds at ease.

Between that weighing on their minds, the interpersonal garbage going on both inside and outside of their little group, and the fact that the entire city seemed to be on high-alert for digimon sightings -- not a day didn't go by that a news report went out about alleged sightings and follow-up on the fire... it made fighting a giant spider more stressful than it had any right to be.   
And, considering they were _fighting a giant spider_ , one that spat poison no less, that was certainly saying something.

"Poison Thread!" Dokugumon snarled while scrambling to its many feet. It released a fully-formed purple-tinted spider web from the talon-like spinneret on its abdomen, and this web fell over Ibexmon like a net. The goat tossed his head to try and dislodge it, but he only succeeded in getting himself more stuck. "Poison Thread!" it yelled again as Frekimon lunged for it, and the web stopped her mid-leap, knocking her off course like a cannonball-- impressive stuff, for a blob of spider silk.   
"This is much easier," Dokugumon rumbled, rounding on Ibexmon, whose struggling was only making his situation worse, "when you stop _struggling so much_."

"New Moon Fire!"

If the poison mist had released putrid smoke on contact with the flames on Frekimon's arms, then what the burning web released when hit with a full-on fireball was on a whole other level. Sam ripped his cap off of his head to cover his mouth with it, and Meghan ducked her face into her shirt, and even so, it not only reeked something awful, but stung their throats and eyes.

Well, it was better than the alternative, but...

"Ravenous Hunter!" Frekimon yelled from somewhere in the cloud of smoke, and then she bounded out of it, the fire on her wrists engulfing her hands entirely as she lunged towards Dokugumon. The spider -- even with all the eyes set in its gold-masked face -- couldn't seem to tell where she was coming from until the moment she made contact.

Dokugumon roared and spat as it began to dissolve into pixellated light, and the light shot to Meghan and Sam's D-Rives; Ibexmon was only now starting to break free of the sticky purplish spider web, and he seemed rather put out to have been waylaid so easily. Both humans kept to the side, still keeping their mouths covered as the gentle wind was taking its sweet time dissipating.

"Looks like you were in a bit of a sticky--" Frekimon said, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

"If you finish that sentence," Ibexmon said, snorting and tossing his head, "I will headbutt you into the next county."

Both champion-level digimon began to glow, and as the light faded, they were replaced by their usual forms, and the smoke was fading faster as time went on.

"It's lucky that Frekimon was able to burn the webbing off," Meghan said, glancing over at Sam. She couldn't say she was surprised when he was looking down at his D-Rive, not fully paying attention to anything else, but she did feel a vague pang of-- annoyance? Disappointment? Something like that.

"It's only lucky it was distracted enough for her to be _able_ to burn it off," Oremon said as he closed the distance between them. He sounded slightly put out.

"Yeah, you did a real good job being bait, nice work" Gelermon said with a smirk, reaching over and patting Oremon on the back with one paw. Considering the full foot difference in their heighths, it was kind of an awkward reach for Gelermon, but whatever.

Oremon snorted. He was clearly more than a little bit embarassed over the whole affair, but wasn't about to say as much. "I weakened it."

"And I pulled out the save, so I mean, if not for me, we'd all be spider food. Please don't hold your applause."

"I wasn't going to applaud in the first place."

"Shame, you really should."

Meghan looked from the bickering digimon over to Sam, who had shifted his attention right back to his D-Rive, and she sighed. "Well, at least there was nobody around," she tried, gesturing vaguely in the air with one hand. She looked around to confirm that she was right, and indeed-- there had no audience, best she could tell.

She didn't actually expect him to throw down and actually want to hang around, but she still kind of felt frustrated when Sam blinked a couple times, like he was waking up from a day dream, shaking his head and looked over at her.   
"Uh," he said, elegantly. "Yeah."   
He minimized Gelermon before she started a fight with Oremon -- which she was on-track to do -- and resumed looking at the device, and then around at their surroundings.

"Is something wrong?" Meghan asked, while Oremon -- not yet minimized -- crossed over to her. Again, Sam was a bit preoccupied, and took a couple seconds before he seemed to realize he was being spoken to.   
(Meg tried not to take it too personally.)

"I was just looking on the radar," Sam said belatedly, shaking his head. There were a number of things he could be looking for-- Ratamon, the other D-Rive holders, any tag-along emergents -- but judging by the fact that he tucked the device away into his pocket, none of them were making themselves apparent. "Thought I saw something, but it's either gone or I was wrong."

Meghan cast a look down at her own D-Rive, and indeed, there was nothing there. When she looked back up, though, Sam was already turning to leave.

"I'll see you later I guess?" she called to his back; at the very least, he waved over his shoulder, so he had at least heard and acknowledged her, which was... something, she supposed.

"Yeah," he called, a bit belatedly, "later!"

Meghan paused, then slumped with a sigh.   
"You know, I'm not even terribly surprised," she said, looking over at Oremon, who was standing with arms folded. She didn't explain herself, instead looking around to see if anyone had seen them. "You ready to go?"

Oremon nodded.   
It wasn't that there was a huge risk of being seen here -- this wasn't exactly a busy thoroughfare -- but they didn't want to dawdle any longer than they had to. With a burst of orange light, Meghan minimized Oremon and took off back to where she had parked-- though it took a moment to remember which way to go, among all of the industrial plants and piles of gravel and general detritus.

 

***

"So, I take it by the fact that you so rudely minimized me," Hulimon said, emerging out of his respective D-Rive with a burst of cyan light on the roof of Eli's car as he approached, "we're just going to let them get away? No muss, no fuss?"

They had gotten to the scene of the fight at the very tail end of things-- they had literally seen the green and orange light as the goat and the dog had returned to their base forms. Hulimon had emerged of his own volition, ready to fight, but Eli had been quick to hold him back by minimizing him before he could give away their location.

He was used to Hulimon practically leaping into danger (and often danger that Hulimon himself had caused), so keeping a rein on the little fox was pretty standard operating procedure.

"It'd have been two against one, my dude," Eli said, stretching his arms out over his head. He hadn't really wanted to come out today, anyway, so when the emergent had shown up on his radar, he had kind of low key been hoping that one of the others would deal with it.   
Maybe not the best attitude for someone who was supposed to be the hero and all, what with the mission and shit, but... really, that was more Ryan's shtick, far as Eli cared.

"Five on three the last time, and we did fine!" Hulimon objected, apparently quite a bit more hurt by the blow to his ego than actually concerned with letting the refugee digimon get away.

"Yeah, because they couldn't focus on who to concentrate on, and the both of them are the heaviest hitters. You'd be a pancake in, like, thirty seconds flat."

"So little faith you have in me!"

"Would _you_ have faith in you?"

Beat. "Okay, I hear your point, but still, you don't gotta be so hurtful." Hulimon groaned, tilting his head back. "Are we actually gonna gonna tell California McGee that we were just late and didn't want a two-on-one, or are we just gonna," the little fox set down his bag so that he could use both paws to made air quotes, "'forget' to mention it again?"

"Eh, we should probably mention it," Eli said, looking around after looking down at his radar again. He could have sworn he saw that little Ratamon thing on his radar-- had he been mistaken? He wasn't sure, but he didn't think it would have been able to run fast enough to completely get out of range that quickly...   
Mm.   
He'd worry about it later.

 

Honestly, he wanted to mess with Ratamon alone even less than he wanted to get involved in a two-on-one alone.

 

***

Ever since the Meramon fight, and even moreso since Xander and Peter came to blows, Meghan couldn't shake the feeling that what comraderie they had built up was starting to dissolve again.   
The past few days had been-- let's charitably call them _understandably tense_. Nobody really seemed to know how to react to two of their little squad members flipping out on each other like Xander and Peter had, and similarly, nobody really wanted to be the first one to talk about it. Xander and Peter were both staying remarkably quiet; Sam was as hard to interact with as usual; even Natalie had become a bit more withdrawn as she, presumably, tried to figure out the best route to take.

Meghan couldn't say she begrudged anyone, because she had her own fallout to deal with. She got how it went.

She poked her head in the front door, looking around. Sure, her mother's car wasn't there, but she couldn't be too careful. "Hey, I'm back," she called in, cautiously.

"Hey Meg," James said in greeting; though she could hear her younger brother's voice, she couldn't see him except for one foot hanging off the side of the couch that he was currently, apparently, sprawled across. The TV was going, the AC was blasting, and it was in all regards a pretty typical July mid-afternoon.

"Mom's not back yet, is she?" she asked, looking around a bit nervously. She practically jumped when she saw a shape come out of the kitchen, but this was just -- as it turned out -- Brendan, holding a sandwich.

"Nah," her older brother said, shaking his head. "You're safe, for now."

Even with a couple days to cool down since the newsworthy incident that hard sparked this media firestorm (both 'cool down' and 'firestorm' puns _thoroughly_ intended), the acting head of the Abbott household was still tetchy about any potential Digimon activity. Meghan really didn't want to deal with it if she could help it, so she had felt deeply lucky when her mother had been out of the house, running errands, when she got the heads-up on the emergent digimon from Sam.   
She had low key been dreading the possibility of her mother getting back before her and asking all sorts of well-meaning, but unwanted and nagging, questions about where she was running off to on a day off.

(She knew her mother was just concerned about her safety; it didn't make it any less frustrating.)

Oremon re-appeared next to Meghan with a flash of orange light as she knelt down to pull her shoes off; from over the back of the couch, James waved one hand when he heard the tap of Oremon's hooves settling on the floor. Oremon, though he'd deny it if ever asked, half-waved back even though he knew James couldn't see it.

"Would I be right in guessing you wouldn't have totally thrown me under the bus if she had gotten back before me?" Meghan asked, realizing wih some repulsion that her clothes vaguely smelled like the putrid smoke that burning Dokugumon's attacks had resulted in and resolving to change them as soon as she got upstairs.

"I didn't exactly have a plan--" Brendan admitted, crossing over to the couch and dropping down onto it, even though James was in the way; this did not even remotely stop him.

"Ow you're sitting on my legs _get off_!"

The yelling also didn't stop him.

"-- But I figured I'd wing it," Brendan continued, looking over his shoulder. "Though, honestly, is this gonna be a regular thing? Am I going to have to start pre-writing excuses for you?"

"I'll write some on cards for you ahead of time," Meghan said, heaving a sigh and slumping her shoulders. "I'm gonna go change, my clothes smell like I've been hanging around hippies and I'd rather not deal with questions about _that_."

"Should we hose Oremon off in the back yard while you're doing that?" James piped up, and Oremon snorted with offense, folding his arms. (He smelled fine, thank you very much.)

"Let's go upstairs," he said, turning on his heel to do just that. Meghan paused for a beat and tossed a quick 'later' to her brothers before following.   
Meghan took the stairs two at a time, while Oremon clumped his way up rather heavily-- each step was a little more forceful than it really had to be, though not so much that he was stomping.

"You seem grumpier than usual," Meghan pointed out once they were both at the landing, and Oremon snorted yet again.

"No I'm not," he said, lying so obviously and so poorly that Meghan didn't see the point in arguing it.

"If you say so," she said with a shrug of one shoulder, stretching her arms above her head; Oremon continued on without her. This struck her as slightly odd -- Oremon almost always waited up for her, but...   
He did wait outside of her door, though, standing with arms folded to the side so she could go in and change in privacy.

"You know," Oremon's voice drifted through the door a few minutes later, voice muffled, "I'm fairly certain I could have taken that Dokugumon on by myself."

Meghan paused as she pulled a new shirt on and thus completing her re-dressing, furrowing her brow. She paused before answering. In this pause, she pulled her D-Rive out of the pocket of her old jeans and placed it on her desk before she crossed to the door and cracked it open. Oremon was still standing to the side of the door with his back against the wall, arms folded and expression grumpy.   
"I'm sure you could have?" she said, raising her voice in a slightly bewildered question, pulling the door open further so Oremon could enter the room.

He pushed away from the wall and entered the room. He went directly for his futon, which lay on the floor on the opposite side of the room from Meghan's bed; he dropped unceremoniously into a cross-legged sitting position, obviously still put out.

"Okay, what's wrong?" Meghan said, puffing one of her cheeks out in frustration.

Oremon looked like he was considering saying _nothing_ , but luckily, he seemed to veto that, and cut to the chase. "I don't see why Gelermon had to be so obnoxious about the fight," he said.

"That's kind of just the way she is, I think," Meghan tried, shrugging one shoulder-- she was relieved that he was actually sharing what was bothering him, but she couldn't help but feel a little frustrated. Why _now_ , when everything else was already piling up? "She wouldn't have had an easy a time without you around, either, so I get where you're annoyed, but--"

Oremon snorted loudly, his voice derisive as he recalled Gelermon's words. "Right. I made great bait. Great job."

"That's not what I said," Meghan said a bit helplessly, slumping her shoulders. She was starting to see what he was so sore about, but what could she do about it?

"But I'm not wrong," Oremon said gruffly. "Between being bait so she has a chance to get a hit in and getting thrown up and down the street every time I get in a fight, I'm just doing a fantastic job making everyone else's job easier."

Meghan looked at him with a slightly bemused expression on her face, her brow furrowed. "I-- what?" Oremon frowned, but he didn't say anything further, folding his arms and turning away.   
She furrowed her brow and flopped down onto her bed, spread out eagle and her eyes on the ceiling.

It was true that Oremon was-- well, out of the group, he was indeed probably the most likely to get a bit roughed up in a fight, but she had figured that no small part of that was the fact that, as both Oremon and Ibexmon, one of his primary modes of attack was smashing his head into other digimon, which put him in the line of proverbial fire, and he had always been able to shrug it off pretty well.

She wondered, all of a sudden, what kind of blow it had been to his ego when she had run out between him and Hokkaimon when they had been fighting the other group, and she felt a strange lump in her throat.   
Between the tension in the group, the back-to-back digimon and all the stresses that that entailed, her mother's reaction to all of this, (what she interpreted as) vague annoyance from her brothers being asked to cover for her, and now Oremon's mood tanking...

Well.   
Obviously, she told herself, she was just being over-sensitive, right? Right! Nothing to worry about.

...

She wiped at her face with the sleeve of her shirt in as surreptitious a way as she could muster. Oremon -- to his credit -- seemed to notice anyway, and as she sat up, she noticed that he was looking at her.   
"Is something else wrong?" she said, putting a smile on her face. "You're looking at me weird."

Oremon frowned. He didn't say anything, merely shook his head.

 

***

Later on, Meghan, James, and her mother were seated in the living room; the sounds of the evening news on the televison and their conversation carried well enough for Oremon to hear all of them from the top of the stairs.   
It wasn't unusual for him to sit out of these times-- at least, when Meghan's mother was the only parent around. He could never shake the feeling that she had never liked him as much as Meghan's father did, especially not since he had evolved into Oremon, and double especially not since all of this digimon business had begun. _Triple_ especially since last week.

He was trying to give Meghan a bit of space, though he wondered if he wasn't making the wrong choice by doing so. He simply didn't want to exacerbate the problem; he knew that if her mother started talking about digimon, he might not be able to resist the urge to argue.   
(Honestly, he might have started a fight anyway-- Brendan was out with some of his friends who were in town, and she hadn't said boo to _him_ going out, and Meghan herself probably wasn't going to say anything about it...)

Of course, most of the time he simply stayed in their room during this time, reading or listening to music or trying practice emulated games on Meghan's computer (it was hard, with hooves, but he was dedicated), but he felt like he had the obligation to pay attention now.

"... another sighting has been reported, but not confirmed. Citizens are implored," the voice of _co-anchor Rebecca Porter_ drifted up, "not to interfere if they encounter what they believe to be an Unidentified Destructive Creature, and are advised to vacate the vicinity and contact law enforcement immediately. Though there have yet to be any casualties or injuries resulting from a UDC incident, the property damage sustained should serve as a potent warning..."

Oremon snorted, rolling his eyes at the name that the media had decided to bestow upon them, but he couldn't dwell on it.

"Well, I'd certainly hate to be in such a situation," Mrs. Abbott said, and even though he couldn't see them, Oremon could clearly imagine the pointed way that she was looking at Meghan, and he frowned.   
He heard the distinct sound of James ever-so-subtly getting up and wandering towards the kitchen, clearly sensing what was happening and surreptitiously excusing himself from it.

"Right," Meghan said, apprehension clear in her voice. "Well, let's hope you never have to be, yeah?" Just as clearly as Oremon could imagine the way her mother looked at her, he could imagine the slightly-forced smile Meghan put on her face.

There was a pause in the discussion where the only noise was the news, finishing up the usual _tell the police if you see a digimon_ shpiel and moving on to some more lighthearted human interest story, but the tension was palpable.

"Meghan," her mother started up again, and her tone was clearly the _serious discussion_ tone. "You know, I've been thinking."

Oremon snorted.

"Ever since the start of summer you've been acting very oddly... running off, doing god knows what at all hours. And I wondered what had gotten into you all of a sudden, but you seemed happy about it, so I was more or less okay with it."

Oremon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and frowning; he could practically feel the objection coming up; the only way her pause for dramatic effect could have been more obvious if she had said _pause for effect_.

"But--?" Meghan prompted, just when Oremon thought that Mrs. Abbott was holding onto her dramatic pause a bit too long.

" _But_ ," Mrs. Abbott said, sounding like she wanted to say _I was getting to it_ but deciding not to, "from what I've seen, it all seems to come back to Oremon, and I was just thinking that maybe we should consider..."

Oremon furrowed his brow, his face scrunching into one of vague displeasure for where this was going, but Meghan was way ahead of him.

"If you're going to suggest I kick him out or something, I'm going to flip my--" A beat, wherein she self-censored. "Flip out," she finished instead, not wanting to say _flip my shit_ to her mother.

"I wasn't going to say that!" her mother said, tone defensive-- but, honestly, it wouldn't be the first time the conversation had happened; the last time had been back when Oremon had first actually evolved proper from Billymon to his present Oremon form. "You seemed to be safer when you didn't take him with you--"

"And what if something did happen?" Meghan said, cutting her mother off. There was a pause, where the tension hung thick; Meghan rarely interrupted her mother.

"Well, you probably wouldn't run off into danger if he wasn't there charging off all the time..."

"He doesn't just charge off into danger!" Meghan retorted, but Oremon frowned, looking down at his hands, even as her voice continued. "It's not like he's dragging me off--"   
Oremon clenched his hooves like fists, thinking. Almost every time a digimon incident happened, he was the one with Meghan's D-Rive in hand as often as not, informing her that they needed to get moving, wasn't he?

He stood up-- he practically felt a ringing in his ears, and it was hard to concentrate on continuing to listen in. He turned and walked back to the bedroom, snorting. If he had pockets to shove his hands into, he would have done so.

Oremon had no doubt in his mind that Meghan would continue to stand up on his behalf to her mother, but... somehow, for some reason, he didn't want to hear it right now. Not when he was already licking his wounded ego-- he didn't need to hear his best friend making excuses for him to make him feel worse.

He sighed as he closed the door behind him with a click, and looked around the room. On Meghan's desk her D-Rive lay face-down, where she had placed it earlier after changing her clothes. Oremon picked the little device up and turned it over, and found himself unable to be surprised when -- pressing it to activate it -- he saw the radar was active.   
It hadn't lit up on its own; as far as he knew, that meant there were no unfamiliar digimon around.

(But didn't Shitomon and her lot count as 'familiar' now...?)

(... but he had just felt bad about running off and dragging Meghan off to fight...)

For a few moments, Oremon stood, debating with himself what to do, but he didn't end up having to try to open the radar with his hooves-- a sharp tap-tap-tapping at the window drew his attention, and the culprit for the radar's activation was at the window.

No surprises: it was Ratamon, clinging to the tiny spit of windowsill that was outside the screen. This was frankly impressive; there was barely any more than the narrow plaster moulding for him to hold onto... but there he clung, peering in with those eyes the size of tea saucers, electric green and shocking pink and shiny like a cat's in the dark. He looked like he might might have waved, if his hands weren't otherwise occupied.

Oremon crossed the room and pulled open the window, but left the screen closed so Ratamon couldn't simply climb inside. "Why are you here?"

"See, that's an _okay_ greeting," Ratamon said cheerfully, twitching his big feathery ears, "but I'd say something more like _hi_ or _long time no see_ , myself. Hi!"

Oremon frowned. He wanted more than anything to run downstairs and grab Meghan, but-- maybe not a good time, right now. Ratamon was looking at him cheerfully, waiting for the goat to process his words, and Oremon couldn't help but feel a little-- condescended to, even though he wasn't saying anything. It was just that unspoken _I'll wait_ , paired with his inscrutiably smiling face...

Hmph.

Meghan could think Ratamon was cute all she wanted-- Oremon still thought the little creampuff was annoying at best.

"Are you the only digimon around?" the goat snapped, peering out the window, and then looking down at the D-Rive, just in case.

"As far as I know, and I know pretty far," Ratamon chirped, watching Oremon very intently. The goat stared back at him for a couple of beats, knitting his brow.

"What do you want?" he said after a moment.

"What?" Ratamon asked, still so chipper.

"You show your face so infrequently," Oremon said, "I assume you're here for a reason." (It also hadn't escaped Oremon's notice that Ratamon also seemed to have a preference for showing up around him and Meghan more than anyone else.)

"Aw, and here I thought I was being sneaky!" Ratamon said, shrugging his shoulders, and he looked around. "Could you let me in? This isn't terribly comfortable, you know."

Oremon paused again, looking over his shoulder at the door. He had no idea when Meghan would be back up, but-- how often did they lament how little they could find of Ratamon when they wanted him around? And knowing him, if Oremon did go get Meghan, he would likely be gone by the time they got back...

After some deliberation -- and a little bit of difficulty, because, you know, hooves -- Oremon managed to open the window screen just barely enough for Ratamon to squeeze his way in. He was like a cat-- it only needed to be wide enough to fit his head, and the rest of the odd little digimon followed.

Oremon intitially feared that Ratamon might start darting around or make a break for the door or something equally chaotic. Instead, he merely hefted himself so he was sitting on the inside of the windowsill next to the miniature pots containing Meghan's succulent plants, his little legs dangling against the wall.

"That's better!" he chirped, his little wings and tail flicking behind him as he dusted himself off. Oremon, though, wasn't one to waste time or beat around the bush half so much.

"What do you want?"

"I was getting to it!" Ratamon said, putting his hands up as if to say _whoa there_. He looked around the room. "Isn't the human here?"

Oremon frowned. "She's busy. What do you want?" he repeated, a bit more forcefully.

Ratamon didn't seem terribly bothered by the rude treatment, but he did give Oremon a bit of an owlish look for a few seconds before he spoke.   
"I was just going to ask if the human you hang around with knew of any other digimon in the area," he said, "aside from, you know, you and Raumon and Desmon and Banmon and Gelermon and Shitomon and Hulimon and Lurumon." He was counting off on his claws, but he listed more digimon than he had fingers so he had to re-use some of them.

"Not to my knowledge," Oremon said, then he paused as a realization struck him. "When did you find out about--?"

"That's not important," Ratamon said, waving his hand to dismiss the question.

"... yes it is," Oremon said; but Ratamon continued talking over him, forging right ahead.

"That's disappointing, though," he said, tapping a claw to his chin. "I was hoping maybe you'd run into him and I just hadn't noticed yet, but if he's not showing himself to you, either..."

Oremon's ears twitched as he heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs in the distance; he was willing to bet that Meghan's discussion with her mother hadn't gone stellarly, and Ratamon was busy bringing up exponentially more questions than he saw fit to answer, and-- and--

"Well, if you don't know, that's all I needed to know!" Ratamon said, and he stood up. "Do you know where the other humans are? I kind of came here because you're the only ones I really know for sure where you live. Wouldn't want to give some old lady a heart attack by popping in at the wrong apartment window or anything like that." He had a bit of a carefree lilt in his voice that was just the right inflection to make Oremon irrationally angry. He also didn't wait for Oremon to actually answer his question before he reared down and prepared to jump back out, which, really, only exacerbated the problem. Oremon realized he had to make a snap decision here, and so, in the space of about two seconds, three things happened.

First, Ratamon leapt out the window. He didn't fly, but his little wings flapped hard, allowing him to drift to the ground instead of falling like a rock.   
Second, Oremon lunged towards said window after Ratamon, pulling the window the rest of the way open. He wound up half hanging his torso out the window with an arm outstretched, ineffectually reaching after Ratamon, before he re-stabilized himself on the windowsill.   
Third, the bedroom door opened behind Oremon, and Meghan walked in on a slightly curious scene-- see point two.

 

"Dammit!" Oremon spat through grit teeth as he stood back up straight, looking frantically from the window over his shoulder at Meghan, back to the window, and finally back to Meghan, where his eyes came to rest. He realized suddenly that he was still holding her D-Rive clutched tightly in one hand.

Meghan looked more than a little bit upset, with a bit of shine in her eyes and a bit of pink in her cheeks, and she was looking at Oremon with a slightly bewildered expression. She seemed to be trying to piece together what was going on, while Oremon practically felt himself shrink back. Doubtlessly, she had just been going to bat for him, arguing with her mother that he wasn't the type to go running off and starting fights, and now--

"It's not a digimon, is it?" she said, sounding apprehensive, and Oremon frowned.

"It was just Ratamon, being as helpful as always," he answered truthfully, closing the window screen before walking over to Meghan's desk and setting her D-Rive down on it. "It was nothing."

"That's a relief," Meghan said, her shoulders slumping in a sigh. "I mean-- not that he's not being helpful-- I'd rather not get another lecture so soon, you know?" she said, putting on a smile despite how little she obviously wanted to. "I was kind of worried, what with you almost jumping out the window, that I was going to have to go running down the stairs and... yeah."

Oremon cast another look out the window -- Ratamon had moved so fast that he couldn't see the little guy anymore -- and he frowned with a sigh.   
"Yeah," he said. "No, it was nothing."

"What did he want?"

 

***

Meanwhile, in an apartment a ways out from downtown:

The young woman turned her TV off, sighing as she sat back on the couch. There was nothing good on, and she was, frankly, sick of hearing all of this digimon speculation and gossip on the local news.   
Call her when something concrete actually happened.

"New day," she said, looking over at her best friend, who had just walked in from the other room, "same shit."

"Isn't that just the way," said friend responded, stretching out his claws and climbing up onto the couch. "Will you check the radar?"

The young woman responded with a shrug and picked a very familiar-looking device off of the coffee table. She carried it with her everywhere, though she wasn't really sure why; the two of them had yet to get involved in any fights, and though she knew it had the ability to minimize her partner (she had poked around after a few incidents had gone public, and she had put two and two together)... well, Brockmon didn't want to risk showing up in public.

(In fairness, he wasn't exactly the 'go out and do things' kind of guy; he preferred staying holed up, and was practically immune to cabin fever; she supposed it was apt. Weren't badgers supposed to be really 'hole up in their burrow' animals, after all? Sure, Brockmon was an abnormally huge badger who talked, but, still, a badger.)

But the radar function, they had definitely gotten acquainted with. Every time something called _Ratamon_ was on the radar, Brockmon got very tense and prickly until it passed on. Of course, because Brockmon himself had huge claws that made it hard for him to work the device himself, so he frequently asked her to check it for him, like a child asking a parent to work the computer for him.

"Nada," she said; the radar wasn't even active, and she set the device down, face-up, back on the table. "I don't know why you're so paranoid about this, you know. Nobody's going to find you if you keep your nose out of things, you've said so yourself."

"Yes, well," Brockmon said, a bit defensively, "if things are going to keep going as they are, it doesn't hurt to be careful. Trouble may well come to us."

 

As if on cue, not five seconds later -- before the screen had even idled out back to black -- the radar option lit up. Brockmon looked, with a very _I told you so_ look, at his partner, who sighed and picked the radar up.   
She swiped her thumb over the dot.

_Ratamon - In-Training level._

"Thanks for making a liar out of me," the young woman said, sighing as she ruffled her own hair in frustration. The dot zipped around a little bit, here and there; Brockmon practically held his breath, even though the dot was neatly avoiding coming in their direction.   
And then-- it vanished. Not zoomed out of radius, but simply vanished.

This wasn't the first time they had seen the dot do this.

The badger digimon heaved a heavy sigh. Ratamon must have found a crack to slip through to slip back-- presumably to the Digital World.

Brockmon knew the cracks weren't _new_ \-- not really. They'd been there ever since the connection got (as good as) severed-- tiny trickles here and there, bare threads holding things together. The fact that digimon were starting to be able to pass through them was definitely new-- they had eroded away to the point where they could start forcing through.   
(Brockmon got the vague but distinct feeling that truly, completely severing the connection would be difficult if not impossible; if it had been, knowing the culprit, he likely would have gone the whole nine yards and completely cut things off.)

But that wasn't the most relevant thing to him right now. What was relevant was that now, Ratamon wasn't around; just from that he felt a weight on his shoulders just barely lifted, only to be replaced with an equal (if not greater) weight.

At least it meant Ratamon still didn't have a clue, because he knew for a fact, if he knew, he'd be beelining for them-- but not knowing whether or not it meant he had another plan brewing, it couldn't be much comfort.

 

***

It's a sad truth that in life, lots of things that you want to happen don't happen. For instance, sometimes you want a meteor to hit your workplace, wiping it off the map, and sometimes you want a swarm of Japanese killer hornets to descend on a politician with tiny hands, and sometimes, sometimes, you want the giant monster attacks in your city to take a long weekend and stop happening for a couple days.

None of these things happen when you really want them to, and we live in a worse world for it.

Let's start at the start, though.

The day had actually started off well enough. Meghan's mother had seemed to cool down after the digimon debate last night. While they hadn't really followed up on it, she wasn't still harping on the subject, which Meg was totally willing to take at face value right now.

Meghan had explained to Oremon in broad strokes what said argument had been about -- and he more or less could have assumed it from the parts he had heard. This was dangerous, Oremon is a headstrong asshole dragging you into danger, you should consider just blah blah blah. Instead of expressing how frustrated it made him feel, he rolled his eyes and snorted at all of this as though it were patently ridiculous. This seemed to make Meghan feel a bit better, which _completely validated his decision._

At any rate, Meghan had been helping her mother run a handful of errands (and was mooching a car trip to take care of some of her own to-do list, because if she didn't have to drive she'd take it). She presently stood just inside the door at the bank, flicking through her phone. She could practically hear Oremon to her side complaining; he had, of course, come along in her D-Rive. She had warned him that this was going to be a dull excursion, but he had elected to come along anyway.

They were likely to be here for a good long while yet, as it was busy and her mother had to take care of more than a simple deposit (something about closing an old account), but, eh, worse things had happened, right?   
And worse things were about to happen!

When the lights began to flicker, almost nobody thought twice about it; maybe they grumbled a little bit and looked around, and one person complained about it not being supposed to rain today -- perhaps blaming it on a rainstorm? Even though they could perfectly well see outside that it was dry?   
Meghan, though, practically felt her heart leap into her throat.

She also wondered if she was going to have that reaction to flickering lights forever.

She tried to keep nonchalant as she opened her bag to look if her D-Rive was on, and sure enough, the moment she looked in, it sure was. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from exclaiming something that would be inappropriate to exclaim in a public forum, looking up and around herself.   
Her mother wasn't even remotely paying attention, and Meghan didn't want to draw attention to herself; she deliberated, then sidestepped her way towards the door.

(Why did it have to be _now_? Why so soon after the last-- and why _now_ , why not _any other time_ \--)

She pulled the D-Rive out properly as she got outside onto the street, but she felt it was more important to look around her than to look at the little device. If a digimon was already close enough to screw with the electronics, then it was close enough to be a problem, right?   
So... why couldn't she see anything? Ahead of her was the square that lay opposite the bank and the street running past her, with people milling around and going about their business without any of the typical 'a giant monster is nearby' reactions.

This did nothing to make her feel better.

She looked in every direction from her vantage point at the top of the steps in front of the bank. She didn't see anything, which made her think that maybe it was in the other direction, behind her, but more importantly-- she didn't _hear_ anything. No yelling, no sirens, nothing that would indicate a digimon was nearby, and considering how high-alert it seemed like everything was...

"Come on," she muttered, venturing a glance down at her D-Rive; the dot was close, very close, even if she couldn't see it.   
_Drimogemon - Champion level_.

As soon as she read its name, though, it seemed to take her request to _come on_ to heart and made itself apparent.   
As a rumbling sound began, the ground began to shake. It rose up through her legs and into her chest, practically vibrating her bones and rooting her in place, growing stronger and stronger by the moment.

... oh. Well, there were the sounds that had been missing-- people beginning to worry as they took notice as well.

It would be hard not to, as in the space of not about thirty seconds, the noise and the vibration grew steadily stronger. Worry gave way to panic in record time, and it'd be hard to blame anyone for that. In the square across from the bank, the pavement and stones began to churn and buckle, respectively, and mere moments later, a spiral drill the size of a tree trunk began to break through the ground right next to one of the benches.

Meghan had a feeling this may, just may, be a digimon.

"Shit!" someone yelled as a massive shape began to claw its way out of the hole, and Meghan found she agreed with the random expletive-yeller. People began to scatter and yell as a huge shape began to climb out of the ground. She saw people get out their phones, some to take video (fat lot of good that would do) and some to call the police-- obviously they had taken the constant reminders from the news to heart.

The digimon that was emerging was something like a mole crossed with a narwhal crossed with a power drill and scaled up until it was ten feet tall. Both the tusk in the middle of its face and the massive claws that ended its paws were grooved metal drills, but aside from that, it wasn't the most ornate-looking digimon Meghan had ever seen, its body mostly cream with a purplish-blue back, but that didn't change the fact that it looked _pissed_ , and, you know, _it had an enormous metal drill on its face_. It pulled itself out of the hole it had come from and roared, baring rows of sharp white teeth.

Understandably enough, people began to scatter and panic. This only seemed to anger Drimogemon; it whipped its head around, snarling at anything that moved. It seemed to want to charge, but it couldn't decide on who to pursue; it settled on destroying one of the benches it had emerged near, smashing it into splinters with a single swing of its drill-like horn, and it rounded on the people around it.

Before she knew what her feet were doing, Meghan was bounding down the concrete steps, because -- as she said to herself -- she was a fucking idiot, apparently.

She faintly registered a burst of orange light out of the corner of her eye. Oremon materialized, running alongside her, and they were some of the only people who were pointedly running _towards_ Drimogemon. God knows why.   
"We won't be able to pull it away," Oremon said quickly. "Too many people, not enough room. It can probably dig away."

"Then we're going to have to fight it here, and quickly?"

Oremon nodded.

"Shit," Meghan muttered, casting a look over her shoulder. People were pouring out of the buildings to see what was going on, and she'd bet money she had a familial audience right now, which was _exactly_ what she didn't need.   
Not far away, someone yelled _now there's two of them!_ and for a moment Meghan worried. A second later she realized the person was likely yelling about Oremon. ... that wasn't much better, actually.

Oremon gritted his teeth and -- because, like Meg, he was a fucking moron -- he began to run forward before even waiting to digivolve.

"Oremon--!" Meghan yelled after him, reaching a hand out as though she could stop him, but she realized in a heartbeat that he wasn't simply being foolhardy.

"Earth Wrecker!" Oremon yelled, slamming his hooves down into the ground as he bounded in; it wasn't like it was going to get any worse, after all. A pair of jagged rocks rocketed out of the ground and he grabbed them out of the air, hurling them at Drimogemon. It had about as much effect as you'd expect, but it decisively got Drimogemon's attention.

Oremon growled, his eyes narrowing as he bore down, and braced himself as Drimogemon rounded on him.   
He could feel the fact that he was about to digivolve-- it felt like static electricity building up all throughout him, but now, right now, he was holding it back, holding it off. He could do this.   
He wasn't sure if he was trying to prove it to himself or to Meghan or what, but dammit he was going to prove something to someone.

Drimogemon began to charge as its drill got up to full speed, roaring:   
"Iron Drill Spinner!"

Oremon stood resolute, preparing to duck and maybe try to take out some of Drimogemon's teeth with a headbutt, even though he realized a moment too late that this may have been a mistake--

And then a rock hit Drimogemon in the side of the head, because Meghan had run up and thrown a rock at it to prevent Oremon from turning into a goat kebab.

Drimogemon snarled, turning his attention to Meghan, and in that moment, the metaphorical dam broke. Oremon was engulfed in orange light that surged through Meghan's D-Rive.

"Oremon, drive evolve to... Ibexmon! Terra Spear!"

The very moment he was done changing forms, he slammed his hooves down into the ground, and rock spikes emerged from the ground underneath Drimogemon. It roared in pain, scrambling for purchase and giving Meghan the time to backpedal the hell out of the line of fire, which she did without hesitation. As the spikes receded into the ground, Ibexmon glanced over at Meghan in the couple of moments while Drimogemon wasn't moving; she was putting space between herself and the mole as fast as possible. Right, then.

"Iron Drill Spinner!" Drimogemon roared again, rushing forward, and this time, Ibexmon leapt forward to meet it.

"Headstrong Charge!" he yelled, bowing his head down as he got close to the giant mole thing so as to duck underneath its whirring drill. He succeeded, hooking Drimogemon on his horns and, with a mighty effort, he reared his head up, practically tossing it backwards and driving his horns up into Drimogemon's chin.

Not the most gentle way to take care of a threat, but Ibexmon was not the most gentle of sorts, so you can't expect much more.

Drimogemon began to dissolve into pixels almost immediately, which shone and shifted and burst apart a moment later, gathering up in a beam that shot into Meghan's D-Rive.   
She came running up to Ibexmon the moment she could, irrespective of the people staring and watching and the sirens coming closer, because dammit, this was more important. The moment she reached him, she reared back and punched Ibexmon, hard, in the chest. Sure, it didn't hurt much because it was a relatively unathletic human girl punching an eight-feet-tall-at-the-shoulders goat monster, but it was symbolic or something.

"You idiot!" she yelled, pinprick tears in her eyes. "What were you doing taking so long to evolve!? You worried me for a second!"

"I-- well, you almost put yourself in the line of fire," Ibexmon retorted, quick and gruff and avoiding the question by redirecting the blame.

"Because you were being a dumbass!" Meghan shot back, before she leaned in to hug the big goat around the neck.

Ibexmon snorted again, right before he minimized back down to Oremon. Meghan wasted no time in minimizing him; in all the flurry and the chaos and the confusion, people were more concerned asking what had just happened at all. Where had the big goat gone? What the hell was with the giant mole? Why, they hardly seemed to notice the girl who was running back towards the bank, trying her damnest to look inconspicuous.

(The police had just arrived on the scene, too, so she was doing her best to blend in with the crowd and make her way back to where she started. She'd rather deal with her mother, honestly.)

 

***

Ratamon watched from a safe, high vantage point, tapping at his chin.

He _thought_ he had an idea, now. Even if he had been pretty sure of it before -- after all, how else could they find trouble so easily? -- it simply hadn't slid into place until he had so blatantly seen Oremon check the little device when asking if there had been anyone else around. He was almost entirely sure, now; he had to be, since he didn't want to risk possibly blowing his shot on a false hunch.

See, he had gotten the idea last night, when he had visited Oremon; he had just had to find some not-too-tough digimon, something that could go mostly unnoticed... it had taken a bit of prodding and poking and following, but the girl had definitely noticed it before she should have.   
Sure, it was a bit unfortunate that he had to cause this much trouble just to confirm a hunch, but... Eh. Ends justify the means, he figured to himself, and the means had resulted in what, a little property damage? It didn't even look like any humans had gotten hurt. This was a stunning track record, the way he saw it!

And more importantly, it wasn't _really_ his problem.

Honestly, now he just needed to borrow something.   
That wouldn't be hard.

He'd wait on it, though; he didn't want to try to borrow one of their D-Rives, however temporarily, when there was a digimon inside it. He'd have other chances. He'd make other chances, if he had to.

 

***

The drive back home was a tense one; the argument from last night was basically being played on repeat. Meghan's mother hadn't seen that it had been Meg herself to rush into danger, and she was practically beside herself with panic and worry and hand-wringing.

Meghan understood. Really, she did. When Drimogemon had been facing her down, she had felt like she had made a massive mistake; but she felt just as much fear when it had been facing down with an unevolved Oremon, and all she could do was bite her tongue.   
And besides that, she didn't really have a choice, did she?

"Well, I just think you should have let the police..."

Meghan knew not to argue. She knew it would do no good to protest that by the time the police had gotten there, Drimogemon might have had the chance to destroy more property or hurt someone. She took comfort, at least, in the the idea of Oremon, safely unheard as he was minimized in her D-Rive, saying everything that she couldn't.

(He was. He very, very much was.)


	13. Episode 13: Signal to Noise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'm only going to do two illustrations per chapter" I say, lying to myself.

"You know," Jen said, folding her arms and looking next to her, where Eli sat, "generally most people would expect you to share information a bit sooner than _two weeks after it happens._ "

He shrugged one shoulder, tilting his head back onto the back of Ryan's couch. "Eh, it slipped my mind. It's not like it changes anything, you know?" Hulimon, sitting on Eli's other side, snickered. "Figured it wasn't that important."   
He had only just now bothered to share that he and Hulimon had run into Oremon, Gelermon, and their humans, and yes, it was two weeks after the fact. The rest of July had come and gone; it was August first now, and thankfully, the blitz of digimon had cooled down somewhat.

"Yeah, but," Jen began to object, then she shrugged with a sigh as she couldn't come up with a proper complaint.

"At least it wasn't anything important," Ryan conceded, stroking his chin and putting his feet up on the coffee table. He had pulled up a chair opposite his couch so that they could all face each other; this was the first time all three (six) of them had been in the same place in a couple weeks, and the conversation had come up of why all they had seen of the Refugees was the aftermath of their fights-- the news reports and the alleged, unconfirmed sightings, and as it had turned out, Eli's near-run-in.

"It seems they're as interested as us in keeping damage to a minimum," Lurumon said, tapping a claw thoughtfully to her chin. She was content to sit, cross-legged on the floor, her tail partially wrapped around her legs.

"Which is, frankly, _weird_ ," Shitomon piped up; she was practically hanging off of the back of Ryan's chair, and peering over her partner's shoulder.

"No kidding," Hulimon said. "It's not really in their nature, as far as I remember."

"It's been fifteen years," Lurumon said, spreading her paws out palms-up. "It's possible that things have changed."

"They're still a threat to the integrity of the Digital World," Shitomon said firmly. "They still carry the corruption, no matter how much time has gone by."

Hulimon, though, was a bit more incredulous. "That aside, I mean, regardless of time that's passed, they're still the same digimon that--"

"I didn't say that they weren't," Lurumon said back, a little bit defensive, but keeping her voice relatively calm even as she cut Hulimon off. "And I remember as well as you do." Hulimon looked at her with a kind of blank expression and he shrugged one shoulder. Lurumon knew him well enough to know he was being apologetic.   
(Well, apologetic for Hulimon's standards. We're grading on a scale, here.)

See, these three digimon -- they _did_ remember. Their memories were intact; they had been intact for fifteen years. They remembered full well coming through to this world in pursuit of dangerous digimon carrying remnants of the corruption threatening their world; they remembered getting blindsided by a powerful _something_ on the way, and they rembered thinking it would be impossible to try and find their allies. After all, each one of them would hardly have survived if they hadn't met their respective human friends. They hadn't even been sure they were in the right world at all, until that scant few months ago when all of this had started.

"My point isn't that we need to stop trying to apprehend them," Lurumon continued. "Just that... I don't know. There's been a lot to think about."

"No kidding," Ryan cut in, here, sighing as he tucked his hands behind his head. They hadn't been expecting the other digimon to have human partners as well-- and he sure hadn't been expecting to know one of them, which had really been sticking in his mind all month.

"I mean," Jen said, "didn't you say you knew where the girl with the bird lives, Ry? We could just go in guns blazing, metaphorically speakin'."

Ryan winced, and Eli looked over at him and smirked. "So I take it that your relationship with her is stunningly good," Eli said, raising an eyebrow.

Ryan rolled his eyes; he hadn't seen fit to divulge his history with Natalie to them, and he knew by now they had formed some theories. "Ha ha very clever," he said. "No, though. I'd either get decked or the police called on me, or potentially both."

"And we'd cause a lot of damage and get in a lot of trouble," Shitomon said, "if we tried to just go hunt Raumon down where he lives. She could just minimize him into her D-Rive and we'd be stalemated."

"Riiiight," Jen said. "I kind of forgot they had D-Rives, too."

"... they could evolve," Eli said, his tone dry as he looked sidelong at Jen. The _how could you forget that?_ was unstated; luckily, she took it pretty well in stride.

"Well, you know me: me brain good," Jen said sarcastically right back, tapping the side of her skull to emphasize her point. "And either way, I guess that would still leave-- what, four more, maybe five others? Okay, so strike that."

"I mean, you gotta wait for the right moment," Eli said, shrugging. "We'll have chances, I'm sure. It's not like there aren't more digimon who are gonna show up."

"I just don't want to risk collateral damage," Ryan said, shaking his head, "or worse, casualties. I know your mission is really important to you guys, but keeping damage to a minimum is really high on our list of human priorities." Jen and Eli both nodded in agreement.

"It's high on our list of priorities too," Lurumon assured the humans. "I'd rather not hurt anyone."

"Eh, it's probably in my top ten," Hulimon said with a grin. "Maybe." Eli thwapped him upside the head gently.

"Right!" Shitomon said, dropping down to the ground off of the back of Ryan's chair and circling around to stand beside him instead. "It just... it sucks that we can't do anything more than sit around and wait for the right moment." She frowned. "I mean-- we've already sat around and waited for fifteen years, but it feels like now we're running out of time, I guess."

"Time until what?" Hulimon prompted, tilting his head and twitching his ears.

"Someone gets hurt," Lurumon tried, waving a hand in a vague gesture. "Or--" She fell quiet, and frowned. They all knew what she meant-- until it was too late to stop it. They didn't really have a choice.

 

***

Peter cast a cursory glance at his D-Rive as he exited the Lotus out the front door. He didn't know why; it wasn't like he had been in the position to take care of any of the emergents that had happened lately, having either been busy or otherwise indisposed (read: still kind of awkward about interacting with Xander, for obvious reasons, or Natalie, because she had bore witness to said obvious reasons).

He wondered if it wasn't starting to get to him, a little bit, that he had been sitting out.

Thankfully, the emergents had slowed back down after Meghan's Drimogemon encounter-- there had only been two that they knew about. One a week, admittedly, was still way more monster incidents than anyone _wanted_ , but after four confirmed incidents in the space of barely more than a week, this pace seemed downright breezy.

(He wondered if there wasn't a reason that digimon attacks seemed to oscillate between a bunch back to back and a slower trickle, but truth be told, he wasn't even sure what the implications of that would be.)

August had decided to start with sweltering heat. Now, even though it was only the early afternoon, an oppressive humidity hung over everything like a damp, suffocating blanket, and there weren't even any clouds to take the edge off of it.   
Because he had worked opening shift, it hadn't been this bad when Peter had walked to work, and his foresight had failed him. He was presently experiencing a profound sense of regret. He squinted up at the too-bright sky and sighed through his nose, resigning himself to his fate. Bugs buzzed and he heard what may have been an ambulance somewhere in the distance.

He made it about half of the way up the block before he heard a voice behind him.

"Hey! Peter!"

He did a very good job of _not_ jumping like a startled cat, even though he really wanted to. He merely jolted a little bit and looked over his shoulder, fixing his face into its usual stoic blank state.   
"Yes?"

Natalie came jogging up the distance between them, and immediately seemed to regret it because of how freaking hot it was, but she powered through.   
"I was just going to come by to see if you were working," she said, "so I'm glad I caught you. As far as I know, nobody's heard from you in, like, weeks."

Peter shrugged one shoulder. He had indeed kind of fallen off the planet; really, the only person he had interacted with to any great degree outside of work had been Banmon and his roommate (but really, was that so different from the norm?). "I've been busy," he said evenly, but Natalie raised an eyebrow at him. She didn't say as much, but he could practically hear the, _you know, you can admit what the real reason is_.

"Are you doing okay?" she said instead, with her hands on her hips and her eyebrow still quirked.

"For as much as anyone whose life is a constant spiral of disaster and monster attacks, yes," Peter said, his tone _completely flat_.

Beat.

"You know, honestly, same," Natalie said, her delivery not quite as emotionless as his but she made a good attempt. Peter huffed what may have been a laugh through his nose, and Natalie did the same. "Really, though. I just thought I'd touch base, and I figured it'd be kind of creepy if I just bust down the door at your house," she said, gesturing with one hand.

"Breaking and entering is usually frowned upon, yes," Peter said, shaking his head, but he was amused. "And why you couldn't just message me about this, if you were so concerned?"

Natalie paused for a half a second. "Part of it was that I wanted an iced coffee," she admitted, shrugging one shoulder. "I assume you just got off work?" When Peter nodded, she looked around. "Do you, uh, want a ride back to your flat, maybe?"

"It's not that far," Peter said, glancing over his shoulder, but a bit of sweat rolling down his forehead betrayed him.

"It's also, like, a hundred and five out."

"... yes, I would appreciate a ride."

Natalie beamed, then paused. "Can you wait for like five minutes? I still want a coffee."

 

***

This had, admittedly, gotten a bit out of hand. Ratamon had only meant to bait the big one; the other two tagalongs, he hadn't accounted for. He wasn't particularly _worried_ , per se. He figured it'd work itself out, one way or another, and if he _really_ had to he could probably intervene, but...

Well. He'd worry about crossing that bridge when he got to it.

(He probably could have stood to be a bit more careful, but... he was getting frustrated. Since he formulated his plan, the cracks had been so irregular that he hadn't had the chance to lure anything through. The only couple that had gotten through were digimon deliberately trying to seek out the refugees, which... well, that was the _opposite_ of helping.)

All he needed was for one of the refugees to get there and start handling it, and he'd figure out the rest on the fly from there. Sure, some stuff might get broken in the meantime, but... eh.   
That wasn't _really_ his problem, was it?

 

***

A few minutes later, they circled back around to Natalie's car behind the café, and wasted no time in climbing on in and cranking up the A/C. Natalie sipped at her coffee, and a flash of purple light heralded Raumon's materialization in her back seat.

"There he goes, taking my spot in shotgun," Raumon said, putting on an air of patently faux huffiness. He folded his arms and defiantly stuck his beak in the air, but he was doing a poor job being convincing about it.

"Sorry," Banmon said earnestly, apologizing for Peter as she appeared next to Raumon in her own burst of white light.

"You don't need to apologize!" Raumon blurted. He put his hands up and waved them a bit frantically in a _no, no!_ kind of way.

 

"Sorry!"

Both Natalie and Peter shook their heads at the silliness happening behind them.   
It was indeed a very short jaunt from the Lotus to Peter's place, and they spent most of it complaining about the weather, because, seriously, _nobody in the history of the world had ever asked for it to be this hot_ , followed by _at least we don't live any further south_.

"While I'm grateful for the ride," Peter said as Natalie pulled up, "I feel like you didn't just want to check whether I was alive."

Natalie leaning forward, resting her arms on her steering wheel. She looked kind of like she'd been caught out, but wasn't too bothered about it. "You've been doing alright?" she said.

"As I ever am," Peter said after a moment, helpful and detailed as always. He lifted and dropped one shoulder in a shrug. "What possesses you to ask?"

Natalie shrugged, herself, but it was Raumon who spoke. "You seemed like you weren't exactly doing that great last time any of us saw you," he said, tilting his head.

"That's certainly a way to put it," Peter said dryly, shaking his head; it _was_ a very diplomatic way to say _hey, you snapped and punched a guy and it freaked us out_ , which is what he was sure they meant.

"And it'd been long enough that we figured we should check in," Natalie said. "Since you haven't really stepped forward to help with any digimon stuff lately, and..." she trailed off, shrugging a shoulder.

"In fairness," Banmon piped up, "the couple of incidents since haven't been very close to us..."

"Right," Raumon said, nodding, "but..."

Peter nodded once, looking out the window of the car. They were idling in the driveway, but he felt like up and getting out of the car now would be rude, and he couldn't deny his own curiosity.   
"So you decided you'd pop by," he provided, resting his elbow on the door and the side of his head on his knuckles.

"Nobody else was going to. I mean-- Sam doesn't exactly reach out unless he wants to tell us something, and Meghan told me she doesn't want to bother you, so..." She didn't mention Xander, because... well, that was a foregone conclusion.   
"Iunno. Felt like somebody should. Especially considering how much you were all about not having the option to sit things out..."

"It makes me a hypocrite," Peter finished for her.

"I wasn't going to say that," Natalie said, but Peter shook his head.

"It's fine. I'm the one saying it."

Natalie furrowed her brow and sighed, perhaps about to say something that was a bit more productive and useful than Peter's self-deprecation, but they were interrupted by a message alert sound.   
They blinked and looked at each other in the universal _was that my phone or yours?_ look, before they pulled out their phones, and wouldn't you know it? It was _both_ of them.

So no points for guessing that it was a message in their group chat.

 _hey so not to make anyone worry or anything,_ from Sam, and he was still typing a second one when they looked. This, of course, was a great way to make them worry, even before his next message came in.   
_but ive got three (3) emergents on my radar starting north heading towards downtown, so some backup before we try to engage them would just be fan fucking tastic_

"Well, shit," Peter said flatly, stroking his chin. That was... probably what the sirens he had heard had been. The sound did tend to carry; Atlas Park was quite compact, geographically.

"I'm assuming," Raumon said, peering over the back of Natalie's seat to peer over her shoulder, as Banmon did the same with Peter, "that it's not good news."

Natalie shook her head. "Digimon," she said, looking over her shoulder at Raumon, before she shifted her attention over at Peter. "Do you want to come?"

Peter, in turn, sighed and ran a hand backwards through his hair. "Yeah. Might as well. Where do we need to go?"

"Already asking," Natalie said, already typing the question in to the group chat.

 

***

Xander had to admit there were certain advantages to having Desmon for a partner.   
For instance, he only rarely had to worry about any food going stale or bad; she'd eat it before that point. (Aside from the pudding in the back of the fridge, which had, indeed, been there since Easter of last year. The pudding was an outlier and should not be counted. He was fairly sure it was sentient, now; moving it might be inhumane.)

... what point was he trying to make, here?

... right.   
Key among these advantages was the fact that, in case of emergency (or, as it were, emer _gents_ ), now that they had a few months of experience under their belt and a better handle on evolving at will, they practically had a shortcut to digimon incidents. It was a hell of a lot faster to be able to fly, instead of having to try and maneuver on the ground.

He was getting more used to flying on Corymon's back-- where to hang onto her mane, where to tuck his knees to not interfere with her wings, and how to stomach the fact that there was nothing between him and falling to his death but his own grip and his faith in Corymon.   
He was, by the day, getting more and more grateful that he had never been afraid of heights, not least of all because -- to avoid suspicion or staring -- they had to fly pretty high up.

They were coming up just north of the river, close to the largest the major bridges that ran across it, traffic had ground to a complete and utter stop. Not a crawl-- completely stopped. Sirens were already blaring, and the trail of oddly purplish smoke rising up off the ground was a fairly good indication of where they needed to go, even without having to risk pulling out his D-Rive, which he'd rather not do while riding on Corymon.

Xander steeled himself as they began to descend, and they quickly wished they hadn't, as they seemed to be the first on the scene. They held back for a moment to take a look at the problem of the week. The emergents, like them, had been coming from the north, and so the view they got was from behind. Underneath and behind them was chaos all down the road; cars were overturned and left abandoned in the street, pieces of buildings were broken, and people on the ground were having a fucking _time_.

The first two digimon, flanking the third from behind, were similar, differentiated only by colour. They were both-- and this was a strange thing, indeed -- enormously large gourds, or perhaps pitcher plants, with vibrant crests of leaves on their heads, grinning mouths full of teeth far too sharp for a plant, and long arm-like vines. The first was mostly yellow, with red leaves tipped with blue on its head; the other was more murky shades of green-grey, a crest of with yellow and brighter-green leaves on its head. There were other minor differences, but one could be forgiven for not taking a careful tally of the minutae.

Not only because they were currently having a heyday, swinging their vines around, taking out cars and windows and chunks of the pavement-- though that was definitely part of it. No, the primary reason there was other things to be concerned about was the _horrible stench of rotting meat eminating from that other digimon_. Paired with the sweltering heat, it was almost enough to make them retch.

The third digimon was huge and sludgy-- it was almost made of gunk, but it was too solid for comfort. It was a mass of greyish-blue flesh-- flesh that seemed to slough off it in chunks and globs, only to be reabsorbed. It was clearly rotting, and it filled the air with an unholy stench that made it hard to concentrate.   
It had bones and strange pipe-like wiring on its body, indicating that maybe once upon a time, it had more form; metal plates were bolted onto the space above its gaping, tooth-filled mouth, and bulging red eyes peered out in different directions through gaps in these plates.

These three digimon had handily brought the city streets to a total standstill-- they were running wild. The more-mobile plants were bouncing around, smashing everything in sight. Meanwhile, the pile of rotting meat practically oozed forward, leading the way down the street with remarkable speed for something that could be described as _oozing_. It dragged its claws along the concrete and secreting a substance so vile it actively ate away at the pavement as it passed over it.

"Shit," Xander hissed, reaching up to cover his mouth and nose.

"No kidding," Corymon said, gritting her teeth.

 

Luckily, while they apparently had been the first on the scene, they weren't alone for long-- or maybe they had been spotted, and this was the signal to get involved. From an alley just ahead where the digimon were, they saw an unmistakable flash of green light, and a familiar black wolf leapt out, with green flames flickering at her wrists.

"New Moon Fire!" Frekimon roared and a green fireball smashed straight into sludgy monster's face.   
The mass of meat roared ferally, but the two plant digimon were quick to look around for any other digimon that might pose a threat-- and settled on Corymon behind them.

" _Shit_ ," Xander said for the second time, and Corymon growled.

"Hold on to your pants," she said, and she practically dropped to the ground, needing to let her partner off her back before anything else could happen. The fact that the two plants also stretched out their vines, aiming to grab a hold of her, was also a great incentive to move. Xander practically threw himself off of Corymon's back, skidding to an inelegant stop, but frankly, scuffing up his boots and the knees of his pants was a small price to pay.

Xander cast a glance around before bolting over to the alley from which Frekimon had emerged. As he had expected, Sam was there-- and when Xander suddenly came hurtling around the corner and into the alleyway, Sam jumped but composed himself quickly.

"Black Stinger!" Corymon yelled, her tailtip glowing black and firing off a series of staticky energy-spears at the plant-like digimon.

"Deadly Ivy!" the green plant yelled, stretching out one of its vines to strike out at the bat; she in turn flapped backwards hard, slashing out at the vine with her claws. It severed it, but no sooner than her claws had cut it had it reformed as though nothing had happened.

"Hey," Xander said, nodding in greeting. "The fuck we dealin' with here?"

"Green one is Weedmon," Sam said, pointing, and he couldn't say he wasn't expecting Xander's not-quite-amused snort, "yellow one's Vegiemon, the sludge one that smells like ass is Raremon. They're all champion level."

"Oh, fuck me sideways," Xander muttered, looking over his shoulder and hissing through his teeth.

"Yeah, that's why we were waiting before getting involved," Sam said, shaking his head, "but we decided they're causing enough damage that we're going to be in even deeper shit if we don't try to occupy them, so, hey, thanks for showing up before we did something even stupider."

Xander paused, and quirked an eyebrow. "Gelermon wanted to start the fight, didn't she."

"That was also part of it," Sam said after a moment. "We've been trying to head them off and stay out of sight, but--" he looked in the direction that the emergents had come from. "I don't know how much damage they've caused already, aside from _not a small amount_."

Xander swore under his breath, turning his attention to the digimon, and while it wasn't going _badly_ , it certainly could have been going... a lot better.

Corymon was showing off her aerial stuff, dodging Vegiemon and Weedmon's best attempts to ground her; she wasn't risking moving in close, yet, so all she could do was fire off Black Stingers, and it was clearly trying her to keep track of both of them. Meanwhile, Frekimon _desperately_ wanted not to get into melee range with Raremon, who was backtracking after her-- and it could really move, for a giant mass of rotten meat and slime. It roared as she fired off New Moon Fires into its face, retaliating with bursts of foul gas and swipes of its claws.

While the two-man team of Corymon and Frekimon were able to occupy the digimon, they weren't making much headway; this wasn't a job for two digimon.

Conveniently enough, within a few minutes, it didn't have to be.

"Compost--" Vegiemon began, but it was interrupted.

"Terra Spear!"

A spike of sharp rock jetted up underneath Vegiemon, knocking the plant off its course as it produced and prepared to hurl an assuredly-horrible sludge of dubious origin at Corymon. Coming up from behind, Ibexmon came barrelling towards the fight, teeth gritted; Meg was clinging to his back with one hand, covering her mouth and nose with the other.

The goat came to a stop long enough to allow Meg to dismount, and she darted to where Xander and Sam were standing.

"Hi, sorry," she said. "We, uh-- we would have been here sooner, but--" she gestured at the direction they had come from. "It's backed up really bad."

"I'm not surprised," Sam muttered, tugging on the brim of his hat and frowning.

"I think there might be some people who got hurt," Meghan went on. "I couldn't look closely because we were just trying to get here, but--" She trailed off; it was remarkably hard to hold a conversation in these circumstances.

"We need to keep them here," Xander said. "So they don't fuck anything else up. Easier to deal with it if they're not running around." Besides that, the emergent digimon seemed pretty happy to just fight them, which was... well. At least they weren't the kind that had an agenda.   
Maybe that would have been better, honestly. Then they might be able to lead them somewhere else, but they didn't want to risk ferals losing interest and going back to wrecking shit.

"Stink Jet!" Vegiemon yelled, gathering up a foul-looking liquid in its mouth before it fired it with high pressure at Ibexmon, clearly wanting revenge for being interrupted. Ibexmon snarled and charged forward, feinting to the side at the very last second, and the jet of liquid splattered on the ground instead; it, like Raremon's secretions, practically burned through the concrete.

"Acid Sludge!" Raremon yelled; it snapped its gaping jaws shut, and its mouth began to fill and swell like a water balloon with something unpleasant; when it fired it, in a pressurized blast, it turned out to be a sickly green liquid. It fired it at Frekimon, who leapt out of the way-- and good thing she did, too, because when it hit the utility pole behind her, it almost immediately ate through the metal, so lord knows what it would have done to her.

 

***

Natalie and Peter had to duck through alleys to get towards the fight; Natalie had a wild hunch that they wouldn't be able to just walk up the normal way, and she would have been right. She had also correctly assumed that the most straightforward way -- the main bridge -- would have been impossible to get across, and so part of their lateness was to do with the fact that she had circled around to the next bridge down to the south.

Though, honestly, they would have been later if they had tried to go the direct way, but... you get the point. They had had to park a few blocks ago, making the call that it was more worth it to take off running, even in this heat, than risk getting stuck in a traffic jam further up ahead. Raumon and Banmon were both minimized in their partners' respective D-Rives, wanting to attract as little attention as possible as they bolted through backstreets and shortcuts.   
(Natalie vaguely contemplated how much time she had spent in alleyways in the past few months compared to the rest of her life up to that point.)

It wasn't hard to figure out where they had to go just playing it by ear -- just move towards the sound of all hell breaking loose -- but as they came to an intersection, they had to stop to catch their breath.

"That's... odd," Natalie murmured, looking down at her D-Rive's screen. She was taking advantage of the moment to make sure they were on the right course, but...

Peter frowned, pulling his own D-Rive out to see what she was looking at, and he furrowed his brow as he swiped his thumb over the radar screen.

"I don't recognize that name," Natalie said. "Do you think it's another emergent?"

"Hell if I know," Peter said. There was a lot to take in on the screen-- not only was there the cluster of digimon a few blocks away, there was a very active dot -- Ratamon, presumably -- bounding this way and that, but... there was a new dot, staying quite still, very close by-- just in the other direction.

"What's up?" Raumon asked, popping out of the D-Rive in a flash of light. This was hardly the first time he had popped out to inspect or ask questions, of course; he didn't figure that it would be a terribly big deal.

And the fact that it's necessary to point out that he didn't think this would be a big deal should be the warning sign that it was, in fact, about to be a big deal-- or at least, the precursor to a big deal. The enabler of a big deal. The first domino knocked over in a big deal.

As Natalie was opening her mouth to explain what was _up_ , it happened very fast. All she -- or anyone -- saw was a white blur, and she felt a stinging in her hand-- the kind of sting you feel when someone high-fives you way too hard, or--   
Or when something moving very fast crashes past your hand.

And, more importantly, her D-Rive was not in her hand anymore.

"What the--?!" she blurted, and Raumon practically doubled in size from how his feathers puffed up in surprise. Peter, for his part, stumbled backwards a half-a-step.

"What's going on?" he said sharply, having not yet realized that Natalie's D-Rive wasn't where it was a moment before. Banmon in turn appeared behind Peter with a flash of white light, her expression more pointedly worried than usual.

Natalie looked around frantically for where her D-Rive was-- had it been knocked out of her hand? She hadn't heard it, but-- she looked on the ground, but she was looking in the entirely wrong place.

"I'll bring this back!" a high-pitched voice promised from up above, and all four in attendance snapped their attention upwards. On a rickety old fire escape sat Ratamon-- and in Ratamon's claw was Natalie's purple D-Rive.

"What--!?" Natalie said, this close to panicking, but before she could really process what was going on, Ratamon was bounding up the metal stairs and, in mere seconds, was completely out of sight.   
"What-- the absolute-- fuck," she said, slow but tense, and then she-- instinctively-- tried to look at her D-Rive to see where Ratamon was going.

This didn't work.

"Oh, shit," Natalie muttered, digging her fingers into her hair. "What the heck- what the _heck_! What did he mean he'd bring it back--?"

"Why on earth did he _want it_?" Raumon said, talking to himself. His tail swayed back and forth quickly in agitation, a release for some of his nervous energy. Immediately a hundred possibilites came to him-- to all of them, really. Even considering they didn't fully understand the things--

Peter cast a look over his shoulder, back towards where they had originally been heading. The other three were there, right? Banmon looked at him and nodded her head once, even though she was shaking a little bit.

"We have to follow him," Natalie said, decisive if maybe a little bit frantic as she looked to Peter. "Not like this is going to be our first detour. Get your radar up?"

He was already in the middle of doing just that.

 

***

The block where they were facing down the trio of emergents was getting worse and worse for the wear by the moment; between the two plant digimon throwing their vines this way and that as Ibexmon and Corymon tried to avoid them and fire off attacks of their own, and Raremon spitting its acidic sludge after Frekimon, they were so busy trying not to get hit that it was hard for them to actually get attacks in edgewise.

The police had made their presence known-- now that the emergent digimon had been more or less contained to this couple of blocks, blockades were being set up both up and down the street, but nobody seemed to know what to do that wasn't already in the line of fire-- that is to say, anyone that wasn't a digimon or partnered to one. The humans tried their best to stay out of sight, practically crouching in the alleyway to give support to their digimon without giving themselvs away.

An officer was yelling over a megaphones for any civilians to evacuate as calmly as possible; calm was not in the cards, though, and people both clamored and panicked from beyond the wall of police and police cars to both get away and to get a better look.

"Acid Sludge!" Raremon roared, filling up its mouth with and spitting out the stream of green acid -- this time, it turned its attention skywards, to Corymon. Corymon hadn't been anticipating this -- she was making a valiant effort to send out black stingers down at Weedmon and Vegiemon, without hitting Ibexmon in the process -- and the acid hit her squarely, causing her to recoil in pain and almost drop out of the sky.

"Deadly Ivy!" Weedmon cried, extending its vines and grabbing the surprised Corymon around the tail. With a mighty wrench, it swung her, smashing her into the side of a building, taking a chunk out of the wall.

"Ravenous Hunter!" Frekimon yelled, bounding around Raremon, and the fire around her wrists flared up. She lunged at Weedmon-- or more specifically, at its vines. She leapt in, slicing through them; the moment they were severed they shrivelled and practically disintigrated, freeing Corymon. She righted herself before she fell to the ground, and she may have been a teensy bit pissed now.

"Black Stinger!" she yelled, swooping down at Weedmon and, instead of firing the black energy that gathered in her tailtip at it, she moved in close and struck out like a scorpion, using it as a proper stinger.

A burst of white light later, and the fight was down to a three-on-two.

"Fuckin' brutal," Frekimon said, grinning her approval. Corymon smirked in return before she kicked back up into the air just in time to avoid a swipe from Raremon's claws.

"Headstrong Charge!" Ibexmon yelled from the other side of Raremon-- but Raremon still felt the aftereffects of it, as he headbutted Vegiemon straight into its back. Vegiemon spat and sputtered-- it clearly wasn't immune to its ally's foulness, and it was now coated in an oh-so-pleasant veneer of meaty slime (which is, for the record, a _horrible_ way to have to describe anything.)   
Vegiemon snarled and whipped its vines around, trying to reorient itself and get away from Raremon, but it was met with something much greener and glowier than it might have liked.

"New Moon Fire!"

And that was two down. Good progress, team! Good freakin' job.   
Frekimon smirked, and Ibexmon snorted, and they might have started to snipe at each other if not for the fact that there was still Raremon to deal with.

And then, what happened next was either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it.

"Southern Cross!"

" _Shit,_ " Xander spat, clenching his jaw as a cross-shaped beam of light came searing out of the sky.

The light seared at Raremon's rotting flesh and caused it to roar, averting its attention to look for its new assailant. Malakhimon herself came flapping out of the sky in short order, her strange furry-feathery dragon-angel shape unmistakable.

"Oh, no," Meghan muttered, stumbling a half-step backwards-- Ibexmon snarled, gritting his teeth and his pupils constricting, but he had to dodge to the side before he could even consider attacking.

"Aura Stream!"   
A crackling bolt of golden energy shot from up the street as Himamon came running on all fours towards the fight, moving with surprising speed considering her size and bulky tail. Her attack only barely missed Ibexmon as it soared towards Raremon-- and it was hard for them to tell for certain which she had really been aiming at.

"Moon Bomb!" A voice from above yelled, and from on top of a building, a swirling bright white sphere came sailing down. It exploded in mid-air, splitting into smaller orbs which rained down on not just Raremon, but also Ibexmon, Frekimon, and Corymon before exploding in rapid succession.   
Hokkaimon leapt deftly off of his perch, the coat hanging off his shoulders trailing behind him like a cape as he bounced from the roof, practically doing wall-jumps to avoid a straight-down descent.

"Goddammit, yeah, great, thanks, just what we needed," Sam said, tugging on the brim of his hat and thinking quickly. They all seemed to be coming from the south. Had they gotten stuck in the backed-up traffic?

" _Hey!_ " a policeman's voice over a loudspeaker boomed. " _Do not cross the police line!_ "   
They got the distinct feeling that that was the sound of Ryan, Eli, and Jen... crossing the police line. Well, could they really judge? They had kind of backdoored through it...

"Holy Charge!" Malakhimon yelled, her body engulfed in white light as she rushed towards Ibexmon.

"Shit!" Corymon spat, encapsulating the true feeling of the moment. "Black Stinger!" she cried, shooting off the black staticky energy at Malakhimon. They did their job-- the paralyzing blasts of energy stopped Malakhimon in her tracks, causing her to stumble, and Ibexmon had the chance to leap out of the way before she connected.

Another crackling stream of golden energy courtesy of Himamon connected with Raremon, and a moment later, all that remained of Raremon was the pixels of light shooting towards all six humans' D-Rives, and all of the damage its corrosive secretions had done to the street in its wake.

"Oh, fuck it, I'm stoppin' this before it starts," Xander hissed, and he ran out into the street, clutching his D-Rive and skidding to a stop, turning to face Ryan, Eli, and Jen, who had just come to a stop themselves.   
Meghan and Sam exchanged looks before they decided to follow suit, and if nothing else, it seems that Xander's decision forced a stalemate, because the opposing digimon weren't willing to try and attack through him. Meghan and Sam, accordingly, went to their own partners.

"Hey, check it," Eli said, rubbing his nose. "Just like last time."

Hokkaimon nodded, stretching his paws up over his head and smirking. "Except they're down two, so this might actually be a fair fight."

"Are you seriously going to try to fight us here?" Meghan said, furrowing her brow. "When it's already--" she gestured around. Even now they had to shout, because of the sirens all around them.

"What more damage can we possibly do than what you've already done?" Malakhimon interrupted her, gesturing around. "Look at the mess you already made!"

"We didn't cause even a half of this, dumbass!" Xander yelled, with his typical level of tact.

"What he said!" Corymon piped up, landing on the ground behind "It was the goddamn meat smoothie and the side salad it came with! We were just trying to keep it from making things worse!"

"They wouldn't have come through in the first place," Himamon said, "if not for you. It's on your hands."

"You keep saying that," Frekimon said, flexing her claws, "but unless you've actually got something useful to say about it, maybe find a new line. It's not our fault and if you could get your heads out of your asses for two seconds, you might realize that!"

"Tactful," Ibexmon snorted, glancing over at Frekimon. She ignored him.

 

***

Brockmon paced around the apartment; he occasionally peeked through the curtains out at the city, but he didn't need to look to know what was going down. The fight was far, far too close for comfort-- mere blocks away, if he wasn't wrong. It was still close enough for the lights in the apartment to be shorting out from time to time, though not close enough that they flickered consistently.   
He wouldn't have needed that to know that it was a digimon incident, though.

Truth be told, he kind of just assumed anything going wrong was a sign of a digimon incident these days. Maybe he was wrong, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He realized he probably couldn't keep his head down forever, but... he didn't really see any other options presenting themselves right now.

And then, his heart leapt into his throat as a white shape dropped onto the balcony in front of him. It was entirely too familiar to him-- big tail, feathery little wings, and shiny, shiny, shiny eyes. In one hand, it held a little purple device that Brockmon was entirely sure did not belong to it.

"Hi!" Ratamon chirped, face broken into a wide grin. "You've been a real pain in my ass, you know that? And you were right under my nose the whole time!"

Brockmon's pupils constricted and he began to snarl-- a reflexive reaction. He reared one big paw back and preparing to attack, but Ratamon was ready for this.   
Ratamon leapt forward, tackling the badger digimon backwards and onto to the floor with almost no effort, despite their difference in size. To an onlooker, this might have looked a bit ridiculous, but Brockmon simply couldn't find it in him to be amused.

"I don't get why you decided to hide," Ratamon continued, cheerful and chipper. "You haven't forgotten the plan, have you?"

 

  
As he spoke, the claw planted on Brockmon's chest began to glow bright white. Ratamon pressed down, and his claw began to phase through Brockmon's body.

 

***

Natalie and Peter were moving as quickly, but no matter how fast they booked it, they could hardly keep up with Ratamon, especially when they had to keep out of sight. Peter had re-minimized Banmon, but without her D-Rive, Natalie and Raumon had no such indulgence, and so their only options were to move fast, and to lay as low as they could as they did.

Because of the heat, they elected to save a lot of their energy for moving, instead of chatting.

Well. A lot, but not all.

"There's another dot, right?" Natalie asked as they stopped momentarily to catch their breath, and Peter nodded after a glance at his own device. Ratamon's dot on the radar was running towards it, which meant that they were running toward it, and it would be good to know what they were getting into, considering they were getting quite close to it.

"Says it's--" Peter said, and looking down. He had swiped over it before they took off running -- it had started with a B, but he hadn't really comitted it to memory. Even so, when he looked again, he didn't need to remember it spot-on to know something was up, and not least of all because it changed as he looked at it.

It went from a normal window displaying a name -- that, again, Peter didn't get the chance to really commit to memory -- to one that looked like it had been put through the blender. The name began to glitch out, exploding into a mass of shifted pixels. Maybe there were letters under there; maybe there weren't. Fucked if he could tell.

"Oh, _that's_ a good sign," Peter muttered, but for some reason, his comment went un-remarked upon.

The _some reason_ was the fact that Raumon suddenly seized up, like he was being electrocuted. No sooner than they noticed this -- and they noticed it damn quick -- Banmon reappeared in a flash of white light. She, too, was locking up in mid-air-- and considering that Peter's D-Rive began emitting that familiar _horrible screeching noise_ , they got the distinct impression she hadn't materialized by choice.

"Raumon?" Natalie blurted, dropping down onto her knees to grab a hold of his shoulders, while Peter grabbed Banmon in his arms. "What's going on?"

And then, quite all of a sudden -- despite the oppressive heat up until that very moment-- it got very cold.

"I think," Peter said slowly, stating the extremely obvious, "we should find the others."

 

***

Back at the scene of the standoff, the same thing had happened-- Ibexmon, Corymon, and Frekimon all froze where they stood. Moreover, Xander, Sam, and Meghan's D-Rives began to emit that same, familiar horrible shrieking sound-- and Ryan, Eli, and Jen's definitely didn't. Everyone -- digimon and human alike -- was taken aback by this.

"What the hell--?" Jen murmured, looking to Himamon and then to her human teammates-- but none of them looked any less confused than she did.

Xander, Sam, and Meghan all turned around to look at their partners, while still trying to keep an eye on their opponents; they were all locked in place, shaking slightly, as though they were being electrocuted and their muscles were seizing. They didn't even breathe. Then, for a moment, they surged- not like the pixels that digimon burst into when they were defeated, but rather, they shifted and changed for a half a second as if they were glitching out. It happened again after a moment, and the second time seemed worse.

And then they relaxed, exhaling as though they had been holding their breath and looking slightly confused. The entire deal took maybe thirty seconds.

"What on earth...?" Sam said, more to himself than to anything. While Xander and Meghan were inspecting their partners, though, he looked to his D-Rive.

Malakhimon furrowed her brow, and she looked between the digimon opposing them and then to her allies. She looked almost like she were considering if this were some kind of ruse or trick, but her train of thought got soundly derailed-- as did everyone else's, as the sound of something very, very large taking huge, heavy steps shook the ground.

And then it got very, very cold.

_Thud. Thud. Crunch._

Ibexmon, Frekimon, Corymon, and their partners turned around to look as, from a few blocks down, the huge _thing_ emerged from around the corner.

It was _enormous_ , bigger than any digimon they'd seen so far-- 25 feet easily, and that was while it was hunched over. It looked like it might have been a bear at some point-- it had the right shape and it had fur, though admittedly, parts of its indigo hide were missing entirely, exposing purplish, frostbitten flesh underneath. And, yes, it was clearly frostbitten-- not just because its massive claws were made of ice, not just because its arrival heralded the immediate temperature change, not even because it had icy spikes sticking out of its arms and shoulders, but because it was visibly freezing the ground beneath its feet as it moved. The temperature difference between the hot and humid air and the freezing cold it was emanating was enough to immediately crack and buckle the road beneath it-- or maybe that was just because it was already weakened from Raremon and company.

It had tattered cloth hanging around its waist and black belts around its wrists, neck, and ankles, and lashed around its body were bandages with old, caked-on and dry blood. An inky-black orb was settled into its sternum and surrounded by protruding bones.   
Oh, and let's not forget its most striking feature (after its size, anyway): its entire face was stripped-bare and skeletal, with glowing white lights set into empty sockets in lieu of eyes. It had what looked like black (or at least, dark indigo) warpaint smeared around its eyes, up its muzzle, and on its jaw, and massive lower teeth that were as long as a human arm.

It made no sound, didn't even appear to be breathing, aside from the heavy sound of its feet on the ground.

Though they really couldn't be blamed for missing it -- after all, there were bigger things to focus on -- the sound of footsteps echoed up one of the alleys nearby, just down from where Xander, Sam, and Meghan had been hiding for the fight.   
Peter came barrelling out first; Banmon had evolved up to Banshemon on the run over here, and she came flying hot on her partner's heels. Natalie followed a few moments later, with Raumon sprinting after her without a moment to lose.

The huge undead digimon before them cast its gaze in the direction of those gathered in the middle of the street-- eight humans, eight digimon. Its white-fire eyes clearly focused on them, and it turned its entire body in their direction.

It opened its mouth and-- it looked like it might have been intending to roar, but what actually happened was significantly worse. It was like a choked death rattle, rasping and staggered. Icy mist poured from between its jaws, fogging up the air around it.

 

It began to advance.


	14. Episode 14: Pestilence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some new fancy profile stuff to check out, if you're into THAT KIND OF THING. : D

Even without the obvious literal freezing effects of the -- well, _presumably it was a digimon_ \-- before them, the entire group felt like they were frozen in place as the enormous monster began to close the distance between them.   
For some reason, nobody wanted to be the first one to throw the first (metaphorical) stone at it.

Actually, that's a bald-faced lie. There was one digimon who was _absolutely_ first in line to throw the first stone.

Frekimon glanced sidelong at her allies, and she snorted. "Anyone mind telling me what the hell we're waiting for?" she said, and the green flames around her wrists flared up. She launched herself forward, teeth grit and lip curled. "Ravenous Hunter!" she cried, closing the distance between her and the giant digimon in a few simple bounds--

The giant skull-faced digimon stopped walking forward, and focused its white-fire eyes on Frekimon rushing towards it. It raised one massive paw, icy energy beginning to swirl around the claws that were already carved out of ice. It made a hissing noise, presumably calling its attack. As Frekimon closed in, it swiped out at her, pre-empting her before she was about to connect.

She went down like a sack of potatoes. The icy claws dragged through her flesh, tearing huge bloody gashes that they could see even at a distance; she was thrown to the side by the force of the swipe, tumbling inelegantly into a light post. For a split second, she seemed to begin to glow as though she was about to de-digivolve, but through sheer determination, she managed to maintain her form, and the faint glow died back down.

Two things happened: first, Sam flung himself forward, the fact that he was running towards a giant death monster be totally damned. "Frekimon!"

"Hey--!" Meghan yelled, reaching out after Sam, but she accomplised nothing by doing so-- not least of all because Ibexmon put a hoof in front of her to keep her from rushing forward.

The second thing, though:

"Hurricane Blitz!"

Corymon launched herself forward, swirling winds beginning to whip around her. This immediately caught the strange digimon's attention; Corymon pulled up before she collided with it, the sphere of whipping wind energy continuing on its trajectory, while Corymon swooped overhead.

Even though it took the attack squarely in the face, it seemed to have no effect. The skull-faced digimon craned its neck to follow Corymon, as though her Hurricane Blitz had been nothing more than a stiff breeze.

As the skeletal-faced digimon moved its head to follow Corymon, icy mist began to pour out of its jaws. It swirled around and upwards, solidifying into razor-sharp icicles that floated over its shoulders. The tips followed Corymon as she swooped past, as though they were homing-locked on her.

"Oh, dicks," Corymon muttered through grit teeth.

The digimon hissed a rattling noise again. Corymon could _swear_ it sounded something like _"Hypothermia"_ \-- but she didn't have much time to contemplate what its attacks were called, as those massive icicles shot at Corymon at high speed as though shot from a cannon. She quickly feinted, allowing herself to drop out of the sky a few dozen feet.   
For not the first time, her ducking away from an attack instead led said attack to sail past, dealing damage to the building behind her. The icicles smashed the windows of the building and took out a chunk of the wall, but, frankly, she'd rather break a window or six than take that hit head-on.

"What the fuck are you doing!?" Xander yelled, cupping his hands over his mouth.

"Great question!" Corymon yelled back, rising back up into the air. "Hadn't really thought that far ahead yet!"

Back down on the ground, Frekimon was gritting her teeth and cringing with pain as Sam ran up to her.   
"That thing hits like a goddamn truck," she spat, wincing as she attempted to pick herself up. "You should get back to the others, before you get hurt," she said, glancing at Sam.

He didn't say anything, merely gave her a raised-eyebrow glance, and she chuckled, shaking her head.

"Point taken, but still. Even if we _were_ weakened by the bullshit with the garbage patrol," she meant Raremon, Vegiemon, and Weedmon, "there's no way it should be able to do that with one hit unless it's an ultimate. You should get back to safety. Get back to the others. Tell birdy boy, he'll know what it means."   
She left him with those words, getting back to her feet and steeling herself. Despite her wounds, she charged forward again, though the flames around her wrists seemed to flicker a little bit weaker than they had before.

He wasn't quite sure what to make of her summation or what that implied. It didn't help that nobody else was privy to this information, and as a result, the other digimon were throwing themselves towards the skull-faced digimon.

Ibexmon was first, and he surged forward, bowing his head and preparing to headbutt; Banshemon's apprehension was apparent, but not enough to stop her from flying forward and summoning her white spirits around her. Hokkaimon leapt deftly forward, nimbly landing on and springing off of a lamp post and Himamon rushed forward on all fours; Malakhimon held back for a moment, only a moment. She cast a look at Raumon, brow furrowed and a frown on her mouth, before she kicked into the air, her wings spreading behind her.

 

***

Admittedly, this hadn't been part of the _plan_ , but at this point, Ratamon was kind of playing it by ear. After all, he was riding high on a bit of a rush-- finally, after months of running around and bullshit, he had _finally_ found that stupid catalyst. He could already feel the cracks start to widen, and that was just his own perception. It wasn't even accounting for the fact that...

Well, Draugmon was proof enough, right? It was an ultimate level! That alone would have been just about impossible without the connection strengthening-- or, at least, ones crossing over would have been. He couldn't say he was sure he knew if the same rules applied to those weird induced evolutions, but considering that none of them had managed it...

He looked down at the little purple device he held in his claws; he turned it over, and looked at the little plague-doctor mask charm hanging from one end.

He supposed he had better give it back before he crossed back over. Not that he wouldn't be _back_ , but after all, he had said he'd give it back, and he wasn't about to make a liar out of himself.   
(Any more than usual, anyway.)

 

***

The simple fact that everyone except for Banshemon had already been involved in the fight with Raremon couldn't account for how badly this was going. No matter what attacks they fired off, it seemed that none of them seemed to do as much as put a scuff mark on the huge skull-faced digimon; they had to constantly interrupt attacks and had no time to strategize. They had all seen how easily Frekimon had been taken down by a direct blow; none of them wanted to be next, and that meant that far too much of their time was spent simply trying to avoid the swipes of claws and the barrages of icicles.

"So, thinking I'm not going to be breaking anyone's hearts here," Sam said as he came running back to the cluster of humans, "if I say we're totally fucking screwed and ought to consider bailing."

"We can't!" Meghan said, looking frantically over at the digimon; Ibexmon practically threw himself to the side to avoid an oncoming swipe of the massive digimon's paw, trying and failing to find an opening to headbutt, and when Corymon tried to swoop in to take a stab with her tail in the window afforded by it missing Ibexmon, she only narrowly avoided getting thrown by the paw's way back up.

"I don't know what it means," Sam continued, looking to Raumon, "but Frekimon said something about it being an-- ultimate? She said Raumon'd know what it meant."

Raumon's brow furrowed in deep thought; he didn't say anything, but he tapped his chin, trying to think-- which wasn't easy, considering how loud their surroundings were.

Sirens filled the air in between the crashes and roars and shattering of concrete happening far-too-close; if they strained their ears, they could almost hear what they assumed were helicopters, though whether they were news choppers or something far more aggressive was going to have to go unanswered for now.

"Meghan's right, though," Natalie confirmed, nodding at Meghan. "We're the only ones that can actually do anything, we can't just--"

"It's not really _you_ , is it?" Ryan cut in rudely, looking pointedly at Raumon. He, with Eli and Jen behind him, had closed the distance between the groups; Natalie felt the frustration and rage start to bubble up in her in record time. "I mean, more than the fact that this is kind of your digimon's fault in the first place, _you're_ not really part of it, Nat. Why is your digimon the only one who isn't fighting?"

Raumon instinctively put himself between Natalie and Ryan, glaring even if he knew he couldn't really do anything. "I don't appreciate the implied accusation," he said.

"You can't deny it _is_ kind of suspicious, ya know," Jen said with a shrug of one shoulder, before she started counting points off on her fingers. "I mean, you came in late, you're like, the de facto leader of your little refugee squad, _and_ you're the only one who's holdin' back--"

 

A little white streak crashed the party, not stopping amongst them but brushing past Raumon and the legs of more than one of the humans as it passed. Left unceremoniously at Natalie's feet was her D-Rive, open to the glitched-out radar.

"Ratamon!" Raumon yelled, looking around for where the little white digimon had gone; he caught a glance of him atop a bent light post, curiously watching the fight up the street and (seemingly) paying no mind to the cluster of humans (and Raumon) turning to see him.

 _Seemingly,_ anyway; he glanced over his shoulder, and grinned.

"Thanks for the help!" he chirrupped, just barely audible, before he took off like a bolt, ascending a building with lightning quickness and darting out of sight.

"Goddammit," Peter hissed while Natalie immediately dropped down to pick up and inspect her digivice. She looked at it-- one word was visible on the screen.   
_Draugmon_.

"I'm going to take a wild guess in the dark here," Jen said, rubbing her nose, "that that's why birdy-boy wasn't gettin' in on the action."

"Why am I not surprised!?" Ryan yelled, turning his palms up to the sky and rolling his eyes in exasperation.

"Yeah, gotta admit, this _really_ isn't helping your case," Eli said, rubbing the back of his head.

The mixed confusion, frustration, and exasperation on everyone's faces, from Natalie to Sam, was practically picture-esque.   
"You know, this would go a lot faster," Xander said, taking a half-step towards Ryan, "if you'd stop fucking treating us like we're stupid for not knowing what _you keep refusing to tell us_!"

"Is this really the time," Peter said, quietly enough that Xander couldn't hear him, but Natalie still felt the sickening drop in her stomach, of hoping that maybe things would be able to be smoothed over.   
(She had kind of been hoping that when she had come to talk to Peter earlier, and she can't say she was _surprised_ but..)

"Could we maybe focus on the _giant monster_ instead of this?" Natalie said, gesturing hopelessly at the fight, which had long since devolved from a fight proper into an effort to keep the giant monster -- Draugmon -- occupied.

With swipes of its massive icy claws and barrages of icicles, even though it couldn't focus on any one digimon for too long at a time, it seemed to have no trouble handling them; the attacks lobbed seemed like gentle shoves at best and stiff breezes at worst, but at least it was staying contained. Police were yelling for them to clear the area, that they had called in reinforcements, they had been authorized to use force--

"What exactly are we going to do from back here?" Ryan snapped, gesturing at the wreckage of the street. "I think this is a perfectly acceptable use of our time here! You're in cahoots with the squirrel from hell, so I'd say this probably is pretty soundly on you!"

"We're not in _cahoots_ with him," Sam said, furrowing his brow, as Xander added:

"Who the fuck even says _in cahoots with_!?"

"If he borrowed your D-Rive and then this happened," Jen said, ignoring Xander's outburst, "then, you know, put two and two together?"

"He didn't _borrow it_ ," Raumon said, puffing up, "he stole it!"

"Because you were friendly enough with him to not be suspicious of him," Ryan said quickly, shrugging his shoulders dismissively. "Say whatever you want, it's not going to change--"

"Are you really so _petty_ ," Natalie blurted, "that you're going to stand here pointing fingers at me when people are in danger!?"

"You can call it pointing fingers all you want, but that doesn't change what happened. It's still on you, isn't it?"

" _Oh my god,_ " Natalie groaned, dragging one hand through her hair and balling it into a fist in frustration. Eli and Jen looked at each other wordlessly, while Ryan, in front of them, folded his arms, standing resolute.

"We should bail," Sam said, turning to Natalie. "Before any of our digimon get hurt. I don't know what the police or whoever else they call in can do, but it can't be any less than the good we're doing, and frankly, I'd rather our partners don't die."

"You're perfectly content to leave Shitomon and Hulimon and Lurumon to pick up your messes, huh?" Ryan said, putting his hands in his pockets and frowning. "Typical."   
Jen and Eli exchanged looks with each other again, but neither said anything.

Sam, for his part, looked at the ground, muttered something about _I wasn't talking to you but thanks_ , and then went tight-lipped-- but luckily, there was a loudmouth present who could speak for all of them.

"Holy shit, I think I hate you even more than I hate the hipster fuck," Xander said, raising an eyebrow at Ryan and jerking a thumb at Peter to indicate that he was, in fact, _the hipster fuck._   
Peter was in the middle of opening his mouth to say something to the tune of _boy, don't I feel flattered_ , but it died in his throat when Xander took another step towards Ryan, reared back, and decked him in the face, sending the douchey sunglasses perched on his head flying.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing!?" Peter yelled instead of the snide comment he was about to make.

"Don't _you fuckin' dare!_ " Xander snapped, gritting his teeth. "You of all people have no fucking place to say _shit_ to me--"

Ryan came right back swinging, and Xander cut himself off to feint to the side and keep the punch aimed right for his stomach from landing. It half-worked, Ryan's fist grazing him, but Ryan followed through by slamming his elbow right into Xander's ribs instead.

"Oh my god, oh my god!" Meghan said, digging her fingers into her hair and clearly beginning to panic-- and the fact that at that moment, Ibexmon was practically thrown into a parked car just down the road didn't help.

" _Dude_!" Eli yelled, though it was hard to tell if he was yelling at Ryan or at Xander as the two of them began to exchange blows.

"I can fight now," Raumon said, quietly, looking up at Natalie. "I'm going to go in."

"Are you sure?" Natalie said, frowning as she looked at the hopeless fight up the street, back to the fruitless fight with Draugmon happening there, and back down to Raumon, not sure which to look at.

Raumon nodded solemnly, and without another word, he took off running down the street towards Draugmon, who was laying waste not only to the street, but to his allies and his enemies alike. The little bird began to glow purple.

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

Doctorimon's boots pounded a rhythm on the ground; despite all the chaos around him, he focused on the steady beat of his steps, focusing only on what was in front of him.   
Hokkaimon went skidding backwards past him as he ran, thrown by a swipe of the strange digimon's paw; the fox's coat slipped off his shoulders, but he held tight to his bag as he skidded backwards, half-frostbitten gashes visible across his back even as he was thrown like a skipping-stone.

Behind him, he could tell that the fight was just as lively behind him as it was in front.   
He wondered if he shouldn't turn around and try to break up that fight, or if he'd just make things worse.

He also wondered if he wasn't just going to be making things worse by getting involved in the fight with this thing. Sam had said that Frekimon had said that it was probably an ultimate-- they hadn't had to deal with anything higher than a champion, lately.   
(He wondered, all of a sudden, why he had never considered the possiblity before-- it felt almost like the very existence of higher levels had just struck him, sliding back into his memory-- like something slid back into position by someone who had hoped that nobody would notice its absence.)

Back with the humans, a concentrated effort -- Meghan and Natalie on Xander, Eli and Jen on Ryan -- had pulled the two human combatants apart. Peter had resigned that trying to get involve would likely complicate things even more, and Sam was a few steps away, distancing himself with his hands in his pockets and his attention on the digimon in lieu of the throwdown.

"Our problem isn't with them, dude," Eli was saying, but Ryan pulled his arm away, rolling his shoulder and glowering at nobody in particular.

"Well they're pretty intent on making themselves our problem! I mean, only god knows how much shit Natalie's chatted about me--"

"Oh, don't worry, I hate you _entirely_ based on your own merits," Xander said with a joyless smirk as he wiped away a bit of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand-- one of Ryan's punches had led to him accidentally biting the inside of his mouth hard enough to bleed, nothing major.

"I haven't _chatted shit_ ," Natalie said, furrowing her brow, and she felt the frustration starting to reach a breaking point. She had thought that maybe they could get things under control--   
(Maybe she shouldn't have come at all, maybe she should have just let everyone else take care of this--)

As Doctorimon rushed into close enough range with Draugmon to make his move, Corymon fell out of the air as an icicle tore clean through the membrane of her wing.

"FACE OF JUDGEMENT!" Doctorimon yelled, surprising himself with his own volume. He leapt into the air, flourished his staff as he slashed it through the air, the red jewel at its tip beginning to glow.   
Black flames poured out of the mouth of the judging face, flying through the air in an arc that followed the path of the staff's tip.

The dark flames at least caught Draugmon's attention, though that wasn't saying much. As Doctorimon's feet hit the ground again, the skull-faced digimon focused its eyes on the little plague doctor before it--

"Doctorimon!" Banshemon cried-- she was trying to pull her arm free of the concrete, where her arm was pinned by an icicle as thick as a lamp post-- one of the same barrage that had downed Corymon. Close by, Ibexmon was trying to stand on a badly-injured foreleg, and Frekimon looked like she was missing the better part of an ear and had massive gashes running along her sides and back. Himamon had been thrown into a building, and was trying to extracate herself from the debris.   
Malakhimon, overhead, was the only one still on her feet (so to speak), and even she had stopped, flapping to hold her place in the air steady, to see what was going on on the ground.   
Draugmon lifted an icy claw, preparing to attack Doctorimon.

 _You probably could have healed them,_ he realized too late. Face of Judgement-- if he had chosen to use the mourning face instead of the judging face, he could have -- if not undone the damage, he could have at least have helped his allies. _But you didn't,_ he told himself.

_Just like last time--_

In that moment, the very instant that he had that thought, a purple light began to consume Doctorimon. It started at the tips of his sleeves and boots alike, creeping up his limbs like circuits-- or maybe like veins, as while they started geometric, they quickly branched out into a more ambling, organic form.   
Curiously, Draugmon recoiled its claw, releasing a horrible hissing noise that may have been a noise of fear; it was kind of hard to tell.

Back among the humans -- still arguing -- Natalie's D-Rive began to screech for the second time today. It was a familiar enough noise by this point, but it still stopped every human in their tracks.   
It didn't stop nearly as quickly as it had every other time before.

"Oh, fuck," Natalie blurted, as she had the distinct feeling that might not be a good thing.

In the space between the purple light, a black glow began to emanate from Doctorimon's body, if something black could be said to glow. Doctorimon snapped his head up just before the black glow fully consumed him, and the holes in his mask for his eyes had filled with purple light.

And it was becoming apparent very, very quickly that something here was going very, very wrong.

Doctorimon began to make an unearthly noise of his own-- like the cry of a dying bird, rasping and pained. It began to distort, rising in pitch and becoming more staticky and unnatural until it was difficult to tell the difference between the screech of Natalie's D-Rive and the noise that Doctorimon was making.   
After a moment, it was hard to tell if the glitchy screech was Doctorimon, or Natalie's D-Rive-- or both, melding into a high-pitched digital grinding, the very sound of an _error_.

They could _almost_ make out garbled words.

 

"Doctorimon, catalyst evolve to--!"

The black glow grew into an orb of light that surrounded his body, and from there it grew quite a bit larger. It shifted and glitched as though the light couldn't quite hold on to where they were supposed to be. The purple streaks shifted, disappeared, and reappeared at random, flashing different colours for a split second before returning to their original violet hue. The sphere suddenly split apart like it was being sheared, and the paradoxical black glow began to fade.

What was left was...

Well. It was a lot more bestial than Doctorimon had been. In some ways, he looked much more like Raumon, but much larger-- and much worse.

He was once more a bird-like creature, with black feathers all over, an angular tail, a simple white plague doctor's mask, and feathery ears. It was unmistakably Raumon, which made the points of divergence worse.   
He looked kind of like a vulture, with an unnaturally long neck. He had very little apparent muscle mass; his skin and feathers clung to his bones, leaving his ribs and spine plain to see. Stained bandages were wrapped around his neck, around the beak of his mask-like face, and around his raptor-like feet. It looked at first glance like he had wings, but a second glance would reveal that these were just long, tattered black sleeves, not apparently connected to any garment, cloth merely growing out of his shoulderblades and falling down his arms.

Greyish marks, like tear-tracks, ran down his face from his eyes, and a strange black gunk seeped from where his mask met his face, trailing down and dripping from the underside of the mask itself.

His white pupils constricted as the glow faded away, and he spread out his arms, flexing his claws. He moved in a way that was unnatural and awkward, at once both stiff and jerky yet disturbingly fluid.

"IlDoctorimon!" he hissed, his voice cracking and raspy.

 

He rose up to his new full height -- fifteen feet, so still dwarfed considerably by the towering Draugmon, but still far more imposing than he had been a few moments prior.

And by the time he had finished transforming, Natalie was already running foward.

"Raumon?" she yelled, feeling her heart drop into her stomach as she ran. Nothing about this had inspired confidence-- even when he had first digivolved to Doctorimon, it hadn't seemed anything like this. " _Raumon?!_ "

"Human! Get back!" Hokkaimon yelled, forcing himself to his feet, and it was quickly apparent why he advised she stay back.

"Ashes to Ashes!" IlDoctorimon crowed, opening his mouth despite the bandages wrapped around his beak. He tossed his head, spilling a stream of black flames-- not just at Draugmon, but into the air at Malakhimon, and even at the digimon who had been sidelined from the battle as well. He didn't seem to care for friend or foe, casting black fire in a veritable wave in every direction in front of him.

"Hey, birdy boy! What are you doing!?" Corymon yelled, trying to kick into the air but having no luck, and having to jump to the side to avoid a blast of black fire.   
However, Draugmon actually seemed to respond to this attack, growling as it took a heavy half-step backwards-- while it wasn't much, it was more effect than any of the champion-level digimon had managed to elicit. Icy mist began to pour out of Draugmon's jaws, and it shook its shoulders-- almost like it was laughing.

IlDoctorimon clearly didn't appreciate this; he lunged forward, slashing at the exposed flesh of Draugmon's arms. His claws struck true, tearing through half-frozen tendons and causing Draugmon to roar in pain, slashing out wildly with the paw that hadn't been attacked. IlDoctorimon couldn't move in time to avoid the attack, and he was knocked backwards. He stumbled to a stop, rearing back up to his full height in an uncomfortably fluid motion, and he didn't so much as hesitate before coming right back.

"Ashes to Ashes!" he cried again, but the black flames from before hadn't yet died out-- as he spewed more and more of them, they simply added to the fire that was there before, which was beginning to spread to the buildings nearby.   
Because, you know, what we needed with all of this cold-cracked concrete and icicles pinning down his allies, clearly, the solution would be to set some shit on fire!

It had a side-effect, in addition to setting a fire-- one by one, the digimon caught in the fire began to glow with the light of de-digivolution. Frekimon, Corymon, Banshemon, Ibexmon, and Himamon all shrank back down to their respective rookie levels; Hokkaimon, who had hung back, was in no state to rush forward, as he was uneasy on his feet as it was.

Malakhimon was presumably the only one left at champion level-- and she was nowhere to be seen overhead, hidden by the quickly-gathering plumes of smoke.

The other humans still hanging back ran closer; Sam and Meghan had taken off running first, though Xander, Peter, and Jen were hardly a half-a-second behind. Eli stopped next to Hokkaimon, who de-digivolved back to Hulimon with a great sigh of exhaustion, and Ryan, his partner being in the apparent least danger, hung back a little bit.

Draugmon growled and rushed forward at IlDoctorimon, who met it, leaping forward with a feral keen and slashing out at Draugmon and grappling with the larger digimon. This was the cover that they needed-- kind of.

"I donno about you all, but I'm not waiting around for either of them to attack again, thanks," Jen said, speaking as though she was just talking to herself but looking pointedly at Natalie, before she ran forward towards the rubble where Lurumon was using her newly-shrunken form to extricate herself.

The others followed suit-- rushing forward to where their partners had fallen, and they were aiming to do exactly one thing: minimize their partners before anything went wronger. (Sam, in particular, was holding down the button on his D-Rive the entire run over to where Gelermon was; he was apparently testing its range, and it was only a matter of meters.)   
This was no easy task; IlDoctorimon's black flames were spreading, and spewing an even blacker smoke as buildings and overturned cars alike began to catch fire, making the area not only a hazard, but hard to see in. Behind her, Natalie could see a flash of cyan light as even Hulimon was re-absorbed into the safety of his partner's D-Rive.

Natalie, though, couldn't very well follow suit, and had only one thing she could think to do.

"Raumon!" she cried, cupping her hands over her mouth. " _What are you doing_!?"

IlDoctorimon ignored her yet again.

Draugmon had been emitting the icy mist from its jaws for quite some time, now, and over time, it had been coalescing into more and more icicles floating over its head, ready for the firing-- and that time was now. Draugmon snarled, releasing the spray of icicles, laser-focused on IlDoctorimon.

For a time, anyway, as IlDoctorimon was ready to retaliate, for a given value of retaliate.

"Black Shroud!" he yelled, slashing one hand through the air. His talons seemed to cut into the air as though they were ripping through fabric, and from the tears left in his claws' wake, black blades of energy surged forth.   
They flew forward, crashing into the icicles before they had the chance to hit him. Instead, the icicles burst into much smaller, sharper shards, which exploded all around-- and at far greater radius.

What _this_ meant was that every human who had run forward to get their digimon -- even though every one of them was scattering to get out of the line of fire as quickly as they could-- was in range for an icy spray of razor-sharp shards of ice, and got them they did.   
The ice crystals cut through clothing and sliced jagged cuts into bare flesh; they didn't quite have the force to sink in with a direct hit, but that didn't mean they didn't leave a mark; even the ones that didn't leave bloody scrapes were certain to raise welts and even bruises.

So, you know.

This was fine.

(This was extremely not fine.)

"Hey!" Eli called. "Could you call bird boy off before he makes things even worse?"

"I'm trying!" Natalie yelled back, feeling more than a little helpless. "He's not _listening_ \--!"

The backfired attack rained down on Draugmon in its turn as well, slicing through its hide and at least causing enough damage that it stumbled backwards-- backing up into a building and taking out a huge part of the front wall of said building as it did. It righted itself quickly, and it made a noise it hadn't made before, apparently quite put out.

It began to rumble from deep in its chest, and the sound echoed and reverberated as though it was bouncing around inside an empty vessel before it emerged out of Draugmon's throat. As the sound grew in volume, black energy began to swirl around its claws.   
IlDoctorimon was raising his claw for another attack when Draugmon reared forwards and slammed its hands down into the earth, palms out, like it was trying to pry open the street.

And the thing was, it kind of worked. Massive cracks spread out from the point of impact, and they spread with lightning precision.

See, these cracks rocketed out underneath everyone's feet-- not just IlDoctorimon's feet, but out under the feet of every human standing nearby, as far back as Ryan.

"What the hell!?" Peter blurted, hissing as he jumped away from the crack under his feet-- and a good thing he did, too. A good thing that nobody was terribly willing to stand still, as Draugmon began to, with a great effort, its claws apart, and the radiating cracks all split open wide.   
Out of the earth from within the cracks, frozen hands -- looking mummified by cold -- began to emerge, grasping out at the ankles of the onlookers and IlDoctorimon alike.

The street filled up with panicked yells and sounds of disgust and dismay as the hands seemed quite intent on grabbing a hold of their marks, stretching out to unnatural lengths to grab out with frostbitten fingers.

"Raumon!" Natalie cried again, stumbling backwards frantically and only narrowly avoiding the hand. " _Listen to me!_ "   
Xander tried to strike out with one foot to discourage the hand, and only succeeded in only narrowly avoiding its grip, and everyone else that she could see was doing a similar song-and-dance.

IlDoctorimon, though, paid no mind to the humans. Instead, he snapped his attention upwards, and why only became apparent a second later.

"Holy Charge!"

Malakhimon divebombed out of the sky, out of the smoke, in a shining white bolt; encased in white light, she smashed into Draugmon, which wasn't enough to hurt it, but it was enough to distract it-- it pulled its claws up out of the ground, and the moment it did, the cracks slammed shut with incredible force, and it was a profoundly lucky thing that nobody was currently stepping in one, or they'd likely have lost whatever limb was in it when the earth smashed back together.

"There we fuckin' go!" Ryan yelled, cupping his hands over his mouth, but he spoke too soon.

"Black Shroud!" IlDoctorimon yelled, slashing his claws through the air-- and sending an attack at Malakhimon, who was swooping back into the air.

"What is he doing!?" Meghan yelled, scrambling backwards on the ground in an awkward crab-walk from where she had fallen down. "She's trying to _help_!"

If Natalie's words weren't going to reach IlDoctorimon, Meghan's sure weren't, and that was illustrated when he attacked again.   
"Black Shroud!"

"Christ," Ryan hissed, running up beside Natalie. "What the hell did you even _do_?"

"I didn't do anything!" Natalie snapped back-- she was in no mood to be condescended to.

"What do you call that?" Ryan said, gesturing at IlDoctorimon ignoring Draugmon in order to throw attacks at Malakhimon.

" _I don't know_!"   
It came out sharper than Natalie meant, but her patience was gone. "I don't fucking know, okay, Ryan!? If you could stop being a _dick_ for two seconds and try to _help_ then maybe-- I don't--"   
She trailed off, her steam lost after the initial burst, and she looked away.

This was spiralling out of control and fast.   
She shouldn't have come-- she shouldn't have tried to go interfere with Peter, she shouldn't have tried to get involved and help out. If she hadn't come then Ratamon wouldn't have stolen her D-Rive, right? And then none of this would have happened, and...

She screwed up her eyes as a couple tears threatened to leak out. The last thing she needed right now was to start crying.

Fuck it, it was happening anyway.

One of IlDoctorimon's black energy blades hit Malakhimon, but his own distraction provided the opportunity for Draugmon to strike out with his claws, smashing a paw swirling with icy energy right into IlDoctorimon's side.

IlDoctorimon was knocked aside by the force of the blow, skidding off to the side and having to scramble to avoid being knocked into a burning building-- but Malakhimon fell to the ground, and she scrambled to right herself before either ultimate had the chance to round on her.

"Malakhimon!" Ryan yelled, reaching out a hand to her.

She looked over her shoulder at her partner, and nodded.

Ryan looked deeply confused, but in his hand, his D-Rive began to glow-- but his didn't make the same infernal screeching noise as Natalie's had.

Red light began to run over Malakhimon's body in a way that looked quite familiar; a crimson glow that started at the tips of her limbs and began to work, circuit-like, up her body. Unlike IlDoctorimon's transformation, though, hers remained geometric and circuit-like, clean and crisp. The negative space between the lines began to glow with a piercing white light, and as she snapped her head up, her eyes filled with that same bright red.

 

"Malakhimon, conduction evolve to..."

(That hadn't been what Doctorimon had said...)

The light expanded around her, encasing her in a swirling, shining orb. Red streaks raced around her, cutting through the white in high contrast; everything was much cleaner, far less glitchy, than it had been for IlDoctorimon.   
Instead of shearing, the orb of light burst apart into pixels not wholly unlike a defeated digimon, and in its wake was a shining whtie shape.

She was smaller than Malakhimon, and more humanoid in shape, though her tail and animal-like haunches emblazoned with red marks stayed similar, and the tan and white fur that covered her body also remained constant. Two feathered white wings flared out behind her back, while a second pair settled, folded, at her waist, almost like tassets. At the highest joint in all four wings was a glossy red jewel-like orb, and the wing-like end of her tail had one as well.   
Golden bangles decorated her upper arms and her ankles, which matched the golden armor on her wrists, and the visor, decorated with a cross design, that covered her eyes. A garment not unlike the lower half of a tabard hung around her waist, held in place by a golden chain with more red gems inset. Yet another red jewel was in the middle of her chest, decorating the front of a simple, gauze-like wrap of a garment that was worn over a simple black cropped shirt.

With her new humanoid appearance came long flowing hair, silver in colour and long enough to reach the base of her tail, where -- you guessed it-- a ring of red jewels served as a hair tie. Small ornamental wings decorated either side of her head, and her ears drooped downward, poking out and the same colour as her hair.

"Eudaemon!" she announced as the last of the light faded from her body, and she flared her wings out, her paw-like feet alighting on the wrecked street.

 

" _Another_ one!?" Sam blurted through grit teeth, clearly frustrated. "Is there anything _else_ we don't know that anyone would like to explain!?"   
Between Jen and Eli's slightly baffled reactions, as well as Ryan's more openly shocked one, though they were as in the dark as anyone else.

"Be not afraid," Eudaemon said, her voice confident and calm, and it was hard to resist the thought that she had wanted to say that for a long, long time-- even if just judging by the faint smile on her lips. "You humans will come to no harm."

"Why do I not feel reassured," Peter muttered, pulling himself to his feet with a little bit of difficulty-- he had taken the barrage of ice shards to one leg, and it hurt more than he cared to admit it did. Even so, the humans were in no hurry to stay where they were; all of them who had been caught ahead scrambled back to the backlines, closer to where Natalie and Ryan stood.

"You got this!" Ryan yelled, clenching his fist and gripping his D-Rive tightly.

Eudaemon chanced a glance over her shoulder and nodded once.

IlDoctorimon practically hissed as he got back to his feet, his too-thin ribcage heaving with breath-- and on the other hand, Draugmon stood almost troublingly still, the only thing moving being the msity fog spilling out of its mouth and its pinprick-fire eyes.

Eudaemon was smaller than either other digimon by a large margin -- in fact, she may have been shorter than Ryan, now -- but she composed herself with an unwavering calm even so.   
"Purge the Wicked!" she cried out, holding her hands out in front of her. In her hands, a shining spear appeared, its edges blurred by the fact that it seemed to be made of pure light except for the shining ruby set in its blade. Both the higher wings on her back and the ones around her hips flared out, and she leapt into the air, hurling the spear right between Draugmon's eyes.

The direct hit, accompanied by an audible crack as it broke the bone of Draugmon's skeletal face, caused it to rear its head back and release a raspy noise that might have been the dregs of a roar, even as the spear faded away into nothingness. Draugmon stumbled backwards more than a few steps,

"Ashes to Ashes!"

IlDoctorimon seemed still quite focused on -- well, now Eudaemon, regardless of the massive undead ice-monster in front of him, and instead of fanning his flames out, he fired a concentrated stream of the black fire at his now-smaller target.

Natalie averted her eyes, staring down at the cracked concrete below her feet.   
This-- this was wrong. Something had gone wrong.

She didn't feel better, knowing that Shitomon (or Malakhimon, or Eudaemon, or whatever she was right now) had managed to pull off the same thing as Raumon had-- that stronger evolution-- but... she hadn't sounded like she was in pain. It hadn't looked as glitchy, or as wrong.   
She hadn't lost sight of what she was doing-- she hadn't started acting without regard for anyone around her.

She was still listening to Ryan.

_They're like living backup drives for the corruption._

Dammit.

Since she was looking down, she didn't see what was going on until a sudden jolt of surprised noises from the humans prompted her to snap her head up.

In the blink of an eye, Draugmon had vanished.

It hadn't been defeated-- there was no burst of light, no pixels dissipating in the air.   
It was simply gone. It was no small feat to hide a twenty-five foot tall ice zombie bear, either-- but there it was. One moment it had been releasing a rattling noise, scratching at its skull face in pain, and then next--

The icy mist still hung in the air where its head had been a moment before, and the sudden rush of hot air replacing the cold was almost painful.

Nobody noticed the tiny white streak bouncing away from rooftop to rooftop.   
Possibly because-- there were other things to look at, more than just the sudden disappearance of the monster and the unholy wreckage it had left behind it, like the monsters who were still wreaking ever-more havoc.

"What--?" Eudaemon murmured, looking into the empty space in front of her, but this even momentary distraction was more than she should have afforded.

With a rasping vulture-like screech, IlDoctorimon flung himself at her. He had the distinct advantage of size, and he grabbed her out of where she was flapping in mid-air to slam her into the crumbling remains of the front of a building. She cried out in surprise, attempting to wrest free of the plague doctor monster's grip as he raised a claw, preparing to attack.

"RAUMON!"

For what felt like the millionth time, Natalie found herself screaming her partner's name. She didn't even know what good it would do.

IlDoctorimon's ears twitched, and his grip on Eudaemon against the wall faltered just a tiny bit.

This was more than enough of an opening-- Eudaemon wrested herself free of IlDoctorimon's hand, and she grit her teeth, the gems strewn all across her body beginning to glow with a scarlet light.   
"That is enough! Ruby Oculus!" she yelled, throwing her hands out in front of her. The light from the gems gathered into her palms, where it swirled, creating what looked like a small portal, from which a brilliant-red bolt of energy fired, striking right in the middle of IlDoctorimon's chest.

IlDoctorimon stumbled backwards, half from pain and half as though he was being physically pushed by the attack. He crowed loudly, throwing his head back.

For a split second, he seemed to shift in shape-- not back to any familiar form, but to something different, but it happened so quickly that it was impossible to make out the details.

And then a purple-tinted light engulfed him, as he began to shrink back to his rookie form. The black flames on the street and buildings around them started to die down almost immediately as IlDoctorimon was replaced with Raumon, reduced to smouldering ebony embers in a matter of thirty seconds, but the damage they did was left behind.

Eudaemon alighted on the ground, and she was already preparing another shining spear in her hands, a solemn expression on her face.

" _Raumon_!" Natalie yelled for the final time, stumbling forward across the uneven ground. It wasn't easy going, but she practically slid onto her knees when she came close to her partner.   
He was unconscious, but breathing, his feathers ruffled and his body bruised and bloody but mostly intact. Though de-digivolving seemed to at least suppress some of the damage of fighting, as usual, he looked much, much worse for the wear.

"Please move aside," Eudaemon said, her voice even, but there was no enjoyment to be found in her tone. Natalie didn't look up at her, but instead did the exact opposite, picking Raumon up into her arms. "This is for the--"

"Not now, Shitomon."

Ryan was the one to speak-- he had come jogging up after Natalie, though she hadn't noticed him in her single-minded focus on Raumon. Eudaemon turned to look at Ryan incredulously; though her eyes weren't visible thanks to the golden mask over them, she was clearly furrowing her brow.

"But--"

Ryan shook his head silently, and Eudaemon looked between her partner and Raumon. She opened her mouth and closed it without saying anything, and slowly, the spear of light in her hands dissipated.   
So, too, did this form; she began to glow with red-tinged light, and Shitomon stood where Eudaemon had a moment before, and a moment after that, there was no digimon there at all, as Ryan minimized Shitomon into his D-Rive.

And then there was nothing but the gentle wind the sweltering heat of the first day of August, the sirens of police cars and ambulances and fire engines. Ryan said nothing to Natalie as he turned and walked back over to his own allies.

"We'll have other chances, we should get out of here so they can start damage control," he said when Eli and Jen gave him curious looks, but they already understood more or less what his thought process was-- and it was a lot more complicated than that.

Meghan was the first to approach Natalie, who sat with Raumon in her arms on the ground without moving for a few long, quiet, awkward minutes. She had twisted her ankle in all of the chaos, so she didn't move quickly, and she didn't want to kneel down.   
"Are you okay?" she asked quietly, placing a hand on Natalie's shoulder.

The hand seemed to shake Natalie out of some kind of reverie, and she heaved a heavy, shaking sigh. She looked around; aside from Meghan having crossed over to her, the three boys were all watching intently, though Xander was with arms crossed and he looked away when he realized he was being looked at.

She said nothing as she pulled her D-Rive back out, and in a flash of purple light, she minimized Raumon, and the first thing she said was:   
"Do you still need me to give you a ride back, Peter?"

What else could she really say?

 

***

Draugmon whipped its -- _his_ \-- head around frantically. He didn't recognize where he was at all-- one moment, he had been in the city, fighting, and the next--   
Well. Let it be said that this place was definitely not there.

He was at the bottom of a canyon, it seemed. The sky, far above, was dark and dusty; the city buildings were replaced with jagged walls of grey stone and piles of rubble, cracked concrete replaced with worn-down pebbles and discoloured stone as the only indication that once, a river had run through this, eroding the stone before drying up entirely.   
Where the city -- as uncomfortable as it had been for it -- had been noisy and full of life, there was an eery, total stillness to this new environment he found himself in. The only sound was the howling wind whistling far above.

To be fair, neither was particularly pleasant-- his mind was full of nothing but a feral bloodlust-- no. Not bloodlust-- the desire to _destroy_.

His mind was clouded by the same feral fear that it had been this entire time as he whipped his head around; he would be snorting like a bull if he had breath to snort, and he flung himself at the walls of the canyon, barrelling into them and breaking the rock, tossing his skeletal head and smashing the icicles on his shoulders into the rock. The icicles shattered, obviously, standing no chance against solid rock, but they re-formed, surging out of his body.

It might have hurt, if he had any sensation left.

"Hi! Been a long time since you've been here, huh?"

A too-familiar voice chirped, and Draugmon felt the animal instinct to rip and tear and crush and freeze surge even higher than before. A cloud of icy fog began to emanate out of his jaws, solidifying into icicles above his head, before he even found the source of the voice.

"Hey, hey, hey! Don't attack _me_! I got you out of that mess! It could have turned out badly, you know, and we can't have that. Try to show a little gratitude, huh?"   
Ratamon was so tiny, it would only take one swipe of his claws--

"We've still got a lot of work to do!"

He felt Ratamon leap up onto his face, and then instead of just a little white spot darting in and out of his vision, everything went white altogether.


	15. Episode 15: What You Know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! A few hours early this time to make up for posting late last time.  
> I finally added screenshots to the last chapter, and there's a new playlist up on the site, so if you want to check that out, wink wonk, it's there. :U

Grey clouds hung heavy over Atlas Park, the scent of imminent rain lingering thickly in the air but refusing to pay off in a timely manner. Yesterday's intense heat had mostly dissipated, ruled off as a freak outlier.

If only everything else that had happened yesterday could be written off the same way.

Barely more than twenty-four hours had passed since the digimon incident, and the entire downtown area was still something of a disaster zone. When all was said and done, the attacks had caused easily hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property damage- and that was before accounting for the fires that IlDoctorimon had started.

Mm.

At least five people had been hospitalized for the injuries they had sustained in the destruction. It was difficult to discern which were thanks to Draugmon, and which were thanks to the immediately-prior rampage of Raremon, Vegiemon, and Weedmon; to the general populace, it didn't really matter. Most of them were fairly minor -- as far as 'hospital-worthy injuries' go -- but it was a solemn smack of reality. Up until this point, none of the digimon incidents had hurt anyone.

Local and national news alike were running stories, speculating on the causes; the larger news stations seemed slightly derisive of the local belief in _Unidentified Destructive Creatures_ , but even so, it was hard to chalk up the ample amounts of video footage to something as simple(?) as _a terrorist incident_. The entire downtown was practically shut down, with investigations and news coverage and police tape cutting off access to every street in a several-block radius.

Natalie hadn't slept very well last night. She couldn't tell if the sirens had been actually going off in the distant downtown, or if they had been entirely in her imagination, but every time one went off she found herself snapping awake.

Considering how well (read: badly) her dreams had been going, though, being awake might not have been the worst possible outcome. Between the frigid chill the huge skull-faced ice monster's presence had induced, the sickening smell of thick black smoke, and the shape of the inky-black, snake-necked vulture that had taken the place of her best friend--

Well, anyway.

Raumon had come to not long after Natalie got home after the fight, but he had seemed foggy and drowsy, like his brain was half-a-step behind the rest of him.

They hadn't really talked about it; neither of them knew how to breech the subject. It wasn't that it had been _awkward_ or anything; just quiet, with a mutual understanding of the _where do you even start?_.

Natalie sat on the wall on top of her apartment building, looking out towards downtown. Raumon sat just to the side, his back to the wall, hidden-- not unlike they had been sitting the very first night, before they had gone to the river, and before all of this started.   
(... well. Before the digimon attacks started. _All of this_ was kind of a nebulous term, and the more they learned, the more they realized that there was a lot more to it than digimon showing up and wrecking shit.)

Her phone, set beside her, buzzed with a message, but she ignored it.

"I think it's might be starting to rain," Raumon said, the first thing he'd said in quite some time, and not more than five seconds as he said it, Natalie felt the first couple drops hit her.

Natalie exhaled through her nose, standing up on the wall and stretching her arms above her head. "How on earth do you notice it before I do? You have feathers, that should totally count against you."

"Raw animal instinct?" Raumon tried, craning his neck to look up at her; she was looking around at the city around them.

"Is _that_ what we're calling it now?"

"You know me." Raumon flexed, and with his tiny bird arms, the gesture was almost impressively pathetic.

It was a little thing, but even that much levity -- that much familiar banter -- was a comfort, even if something about it nagged at the back of her mind. (Maybe it was a bad time to be joking about _raw animal instinct_ , so soon after she had seen just that from him as IlDoctorimon.)   
Despite the light sprinkling, she was in no hurry to get inside.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked as she stepped back down onto the roof proper. For the second time, her phone buzzed.

"As good as I can possibly hope," Raumon said evenly, which was a polite way of saying _not particularly, but you know, it's whatever_. He looked at his claws and frowned, then shook his head as though to dispel whatever thought he was having and looked back up at Natalie, nodding once. "Are you?"

"As good as I can possibly hope," she echoed, smiling thinly. Raumon gave her an understanding look. Yet again, her phone buzzed with a notification that she ignored.

(She couldn't shake the unease. She couldn't help but see echoes of IlDoctorimon's constricted pupils and unnatural movements even in the sympathetic eyes and familiar body language of Raumon-- or rather, she couldn't help but see echoes of Raumon in her memories of his-- what had it been called? Ultimate level? -- and she couldn't say that that was much more comforting. In some ways it might even have been worse.)

Raumon seemed to recognize that something was amiss -- maybe it was because she was having a hard time making eye contact with him. He glanced away instead, casting his eyes over the short wall bordering the roof to look out at the city around them.

That first night -- the night they had fought Yasyamon, the time they had spent up here just like this, mere months ago at the start of Natalie's summer break -- felt like it was years away, when in reality, it had only been months. Some long, long, _interesting_ months, yes, but...

The few cursory raindrops that had fallen seemed to be flukes; try as they might it seemed that the sky just couldn't muster it up. So much for _raw animal instinct_.   
Natalie's phone buzzed a fourth time, and she finally resigned herself to look at the messages, turning her phone's screen on and glancing at it. Though she didn't realize it, she pulled a truly amazing expression at the notification she had ignored just moments before, and Raumon took notice.

"Now _there's_ a face," he said wryly. "What's up?"

 

***

Sam's chair groaned as he leaned back in it, tucking his hands behind his head.   
Maybe he was losing his mind, but sitting in the general chat channel in MMOs and quietly sniping at people trying to start fights was starting to lose its lustre.

Or maybe he just had shit on his mind.

It was probably the latter. The former _never_ got old.

But even so, he wasn't particularly enthused about engaging with that. He actually had interests outside of sitting around and pretending to be mission command for the digimon incident, and there were only so many times he could read internet conspiracy theories before they started getting repetitive, at least until he gave it a few more days to fester and for the theories to start getting _really_ crazy.   
(Admittedly, the one about how it was a shared mass hallucination spurred by government-issue fear gas was pretty amusingly batshit, but still.)

Still.

He figured if he tried to dig into the D-Rive any more he'd just be running in circles without anything new to go off.   
And moreover, Gelermon was asleep, and he was reasonably sure she might claw his eyes out if he woke her up, and the risk of filling the room with the demon-fax-machine screech again was not worth it.

She had been unusually tired since the fight yesterday, and he couldn't begrudge her for it. She still looked a bit worse for the wear even now, which hadn't really happened before-- usually, de-digivolving back down to their normal forms was kind of a cure-all, at least for the minor injuries they sustained in the random monster-of-the-week fights they had dealt with so far. He figured that it was because of how soundly they got tossed around, but still.

He sighed and looked out the window. The sky was grey and miserable, but it resolutely refused to actually start raining despite a couple of false starts. It was the best kind of day, in other words, but...   
(He told himself that it was just because he didn't want to be caught unawares in case of digimon incident, even if it was just the ten-minute walk down to the convenience store, but he had to admit that having Gelermon with him -- even in her D-Rive -- was a pretty potent security blanket of sorts even for non-Digimon-related bullshit.)

He resigned himself to his fate. He got to his feet, and was in the middle of considering walking to the bathroom to get some water to heat up some instant noodles in the dinky little microwave he kept in the corner of his room, when his phone went off. Considering just about the only people he talked to regularly was the digimon response task squad (they _really_ needed a better name), he had a distinct feeling that the alert was going to be courtesy of the group chat.

He was not wrong.

 _hey,_ a message from Natalie read, the first new message today, _so. ryan just texted me asking if we could talk about digimon things._

Sam huffed through his nose as though to say _this ought to be good_ to himself.

 _considering how well yesterday went, i figure it's going to go_ really _well._ Her sarcasm came across even in text form. _but i figure, at this point..._   
A few seconds' worth of pause.   
_so if i don't say anything for a while, i may have gone to jail for assault. because i might punch him in the face. just a heads up. anyone who wants front row tickets is welcome, i guess._

Sam hummed to himself and debated whether or not he should   
On one hand, he'd probably have to go out. Be around people. Be around _El Douchadore_ , more specifically, which just sounded... awful.

But on the _other_ hand, as far as he was concerned, _he_ was the one with the best chance of figuring any of this shit out, right? So it'd just be easier if...   
Right.

That's how the psyched himself up as he opened up a direct message with Natalie to suggest he get those proverbial front row tickets and come along.   
(It took him a couple minutes.)

Unbeknownst to him, Gelermon cracked an eye open and watched without comment as he paced back and forth to disperse some of the nervous energy.

 

***

For not the first time, nor the last, the meeting place was the city park-- this time, a ways away from the bridge where so much commotion had gone down, under the mediocre shelter of a picnic pavilion. They didn't want to be standing out in the open in case it finally started raining, but the idea of gathering in somewhere where they could be overheard -- like a cafe or a restaurant -- was totally out of the question. Maybe they could have met up at one of their homes, but--   
Um.   
Frankly, hell to the no.

Natalie couldn't say she was surprised about a lot of things. For instance, the fact that Sam had gotten here first, even though he lived significantly further away than Ryan did, or the fact that Sam wasn't being particularly talkative, instead sitting with hunched shoulders and his eyes on his phone.

She looked to her own phone, scrolling through the messages from Ryan that had led to this point.

 _look i get it if you're pissed at me_   
_but considering your friend(?) punched me in the face, and, you know, in light of literally everything else that happened yesterday_   
_can we like, meet up somewhere and talk?_   
_ill tell you what i know about the digimon shit_

She had debated with Raumon about going, and eventually -- clearly -- decided to, which led to her announcement in the group chat. When Sam had messaged her -- she hadn't really been expecting anyone to take the offer, but she had sent off a notice to Ryan that one of her group was coming with, to which Ryan responded with a glib _w/e_.

Admittedly, she felt kind of bad for dragging someone else into this -- after all, her track record on dragging people along for digimon business was going _really swimmingly_ \-- but the idea of dealing with this on her own hadn't been terribly appealing.   
Well. Raumon was, of course, with her, but he had decided quite firmly that he was going to stay minimized in Natalie's D-Rive this time unless there was absolutely no other option. He had no particular desire to start a fight, now less than ever; moreover, if he didn't pop out, then the worst that could happen was a yelling match between humans.

After all, it didn't seem like Shitomon was in any rush to try and threaten anyone but the digimon themselves, so the only thing at stake was how long they could put up with each other.

"I'm kind of surprised you decided to come along for this," she said out loud, looking away from her phone and over at Sam.

"Hm?" he said, lifting his eyes only for a moment before looking back to his phone, then -- after a moment to finish whatever he was doing -- setting the device on the bench next to him, and belatedly giving his full attention to where she sat at the next table over.

Natalie scratched at her face as she thought of how to put it. "Well, like, you don't strike me as the type to jump at the chance to get all social."

"You're not wrong," Sam said, eyebrow raised. "Least of all with fuck-o the clown."

Natalie couldn't help but huff a laugh. "It's kind of a comfort to know nobody else seems to like him, as shitty as that sounds to say," she said, rubbing the back of her head. "I was kind of afraid it'd just be my biases getting in the way."

"Uh, no. He has a tribal tattoo and knockoff designer sunglasses," Sam said flatly, curling his lip. "And that's before the condescension and the constant talking over people and, you know, the part where he's in league with the rabbit-thing with a high horse so far up she can't see the ground."

Natalie smiled a bit, despite herself. "And yet you volunteered to come hear him out with me."

"Well, yeah, considering I don't trust him as far as I can throw him," Sam said, "which isn't far, for the record, because he looks like he enjoys replacing meals with protein shakes and I opted out of high school gym to become a shut-in playing League of Legends and eating microwave pizza for three years, which doesn't do much for the muscles."

"That's fair, though I don't--" Natalie paused, blinking at Sam. She was going to ask how his distrust of Ryan tied back into why he decided to come, and then the _entire rest of that trainwreck of a sentence_ hit her. "Wait, what?"

Sam offered zero elaboration, and instead, proverbially barrelled forward. For as quiet as he had been, Natalie was kind of taken aback by how much he could talk when prompted. "All that in mind, I'd rather hear his bullshit side of things myself, instead of trying to parse it as re-told by someone else -- you -- in post."

"I kind of feel like I should be offended," Natalie said, scratching her nose.   
Sam shrugged one shoulder ineffectually, and Natalie chose not to take it personally.   
Any further conversation was cut short when they saw Ryan on the approach, crossing across the grass to beeline for them.   
Natalie nodded once in greeting as he drew nearer; Sam's attention was quite suddenly back on his phone.

"Hey," Ryan said in a clipped and business-like tone, casting a glance in Sam's direction, seeing he was being ignored, and looking to Natalie instead. "No impromptu monster fights this time, yeah?"

"I'm not really in the mood for another, no," Natalie said, shaking her head and biting her tongue to avoid saying that it wasn't Raumon who went picking fights. (... usually, anyway. Again, an uncomfortable flash of IlDoctorimon lunging for Shitomon's higher forms came to mind, and it only helped her desire to keep her comments to herself. Didn't need to give him any ammo.)

"I just want to talk," Ryan said, putting his hands up defensively, as though Natalie was going to lunge at him. "Shitomon and I talked about it, and we talked with the others, and-- well." He gestured vaguely.

"Do you _finally_ accept that we don't know jack shit about what's going on?" Natalie prompted, and Ryan scratched at his chin.

"Something like that, yeah," Ryan admitted, nodding. Natalie could still see the faint bruise on his cheek from where Xander had decked him, and she sighed heavily. She couldn't even feel good about that, no matter how much she said _she_ wanted to punch him in the face (and she did say so, frequently).

Ryan cast a look around, making sure they were alone -- and they were, because it was a grey and miserable day and very few people were out at the park in fear of that imminent-but-ephemeral rain.

"Alright, then," he said, and as if that was the cue word, Shitomon materialized out of red light, standing on the picnic table that Natalie was sitting at. Ryan took a seat on the opposite end of the table. "She can explain it better than I can," he said. "She's had a bit more practice."

"Oh, shut up," Shitomon said, sticking her tongue out playfully at her partner; Natalie got the distinct impression that she had been waiting a long time to be able to make a dramatic speech, and if not for the fact that this little angel-rabbit thing wanted to kill Raumon and company, she might have found it kind of endearing.

"Alright-- how much do you know?" Shitomon said unnecessarily, looking between Natalie and Sam. "I mean-- anything the refugees have told you at all counts here."

"We keep saying 'nothing', and we mean nothing," Natalie said, her shoulders slumping; she was already starting to dread this. "Our digimon have a hunch that they knew each other before they got here; that's the extent of it."

Shitomon looked between them again, then over her shoulder at Ryan; he nodded, and she sighed, stroking her chin. "Let me start at the start, I guess. We-- Digimon -- come from another world. The Digital World."

"We've gathered that much," Sam said, muttering to himself, but he went ignored as Shitomon continued.

"Our worlds are interlinked in ways I myself don't fully understand-- I've heard it said that we're connected by the branches of Yggdrasil, though I admit I'm not entirely sure what that means, considering Yggdrasil is... well. Anyway." She trailed off, clearly getting distracted.   
"When everything is working as it should, a certain amount of energy is passed between the two. I don't know exactly how our timeline matches up to yours, but as I understand it, for a very long time, up until recently, our time passed many times faster than yours did. Hundreds of years could pass in our world while mere months were passing in yours." She saw the vaguely bemused expressions on her audience's faces, and she smiled faintly. "I'm telling you this so that you don't get as confused as Ryan did, the first time I mentioned things happening thousands of years ago."

"I didn't get how thousands of years could have passed when digital stuff at all -- like, computers and phones and stuff like that -- has only been a thing in our world since the 20th century," Ryan said, shrugging. "I still don't think I get it-- she said it had something to do with the energy exchange, but it sounded kind of bogus to me."

"Go on, then," Natalie prompted Shitomon, who nodded and did so.

 

"Thousands of years ago, the god-king of our world sealed away a great evil in a huge cataclysmic battle, and brought about an age of peace. There have been conflicts in the interrim, of course, and small wars between countries and factions-- but through Dinmon's power, almost all threats to the integrity of our world have been dealt with before they could become issues." She spoke with a reverence in her voice that it was clear that Dinmon was the name of the aforementioned god-king, and they could practically see the sparkle in her eyes when she mentioned him. She had to take a moment to bring herself back down to earth.   
"Um-- anyway! For thousands of years, he ruled that mostly peaceful world-- but as should be obvious by now, that couldn't last forever. A little over a hundred years ago, the remnants of that evil began to re-emerge. It didn't have a form, and it could only whisper in the minds of weak-willed digimon. It promised them power in exchange for their agreeing to doi its bidding." Shitomon frowned. "Because of the subtlety of its re-emergence, Dinmon was not able to eliminate it without coming across as cruel and vengeful. He couldn't just kill any digimon he suspected of being swayed to the corruption, and there was no way to tell before it was too late. As the corruption began gaining an underground following, this kind of became a self-perpetuating problem."

Natalie frowned, but said nothing. Sam looked like he was taking notes on his phone, or maybe he was just playing some mobile game-- it was hard to tell.

"Digimon of all kinds were swayed-- weak-willed digimon, digimon with selfish goals, digimon who simply wanted chaos for chaos' sake, digimon who simply didn't know any better-- but power isn't free. Everything the corruption touches rots-- the digimon it infects are driven mad by its influence, almost every time. They're driven to raze the land and destroy everything and everyone in their paths. They all go the same."

An uncomfortable mental image of black flames and reckless destruction filled both Sam and Natalie's mind's eyes-- especially Natalie's, and they had the distinct feeling they knew where this was going.

"Over time, the corruption began to spread far and wide, and its power grew." Shitomon paused for dramatic effect here, and she sighed, folding her arms. "Dinmon decided that the best course of action -- his best chance to halt its growth -- was to quarantine it. He had to cut it off from the power in the core of our world, and by extension, cut it off from the power that our world borrows from yours. If he severed the connections between our worlds, he would be able to cut off a huge amount of power, slow it down. Dinmon couldn't _completely_ sever the connection without destroying the core of our world, but it'd more or less do."

"We're getting the impression," Ryan cut in, "that this slowdown may have brought their world in line with ours, temporally speaking, so the past fifteen years has been fifteen years for both sides, as opposed to fifteen thousand or whatever."

"Right!" Shitomon said, nodding with a smile, but then her smile faltered as she returned to her point. "Admittedly, I don't know for sure-- I haven't really been there since it happened..." her shoulders fell before she continued. "Anyway-- Dinmon began to prepare to cut off the worlds. A lot of digimon objected. They didn't know what would happen to our world, and didn't trust in Dinmon's judgment. More than that, though, the corruption itself wasn't a huge fan of the idea of being destroyed, and so it created a contingency plan.

"It chose five of its devoted followers, evil digimon who had sworn fealty for its power. It sealed part of itself within them, with the intent that was that they would escape and take refuge in the human world, while the weakened origin of the corruption lay in waiting, the same way it had for thousands of years before its re-emergence. When the time was right, it would force open the connection, and be strengthened by the digimon incubating the parts of it."

Hm.   
Well. This was starting to sound familiar.

"Right before Dinmon was able to sever the worlds, the carrier digimon made their escape. Of course, god-king Dinmon expected this." Shitomon beamed. "That's where I-- _we_ come in-- Hulimon, Lurumon, and me. We were specially appointed, hand-chosen by Dinmon. It was going to be our job to follow the refugee digimon, and eliminate them before they could escape."   
Again that sense of clear pride snuck back into her voice; she didn't quite puff her chest out, but it was practically audible in her voice anyway. Once again, as soon as she continued her story, she deflated just as quickly.   
"... it didn't exactly work as well as we might have hoped."

"Obviously enough," Ryan said, and Shitomon folded her arms.

"Obviously enough," Shitomon echoed. Natalie furrowed her brow, but didn't have time to comment; Shitomon wasn't done talking. "We lost a lot of our power as we were coming over-- I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't because of the connection closing behind us as much as whatever attacked us..."

"Whatever attacked you?" Natalie prompted, and Shitomon looked confused for a moment, before she realized she hadn't explained that yet.

"Oh! Something attacked us en route between our world and this one. It separated us. Our best guess is that it had been one of the refugee digimon, but..." She sighed, shaking her head. "We had no proof, and nothing to go on."

"That aside, though-- when the D-Rives showed up," Ryan picked up from his partner here, "we figured it must have meant that something was going wrong, and when digimon started showing up afterwards, that pretty much clinched it."

Natalie wanted to tell him that the digimon had definitely shown up before she got her D-Rive, but she wasn't sure what that would imply-- or if Ryan and his little group got their D-Rives at the same time as she and all of hers.   
(They had, and this _was_ relevant information, but she had no way to know this at the time.)

Shitomon nodded.   
"We figured that it must have meant that the connection between the worlds was being pried open again. _My_ theory is that the corruption has been trying to worm its way through this entire time, and its cracks are finally starting to spread. If other digimon end up coming through, like they have been, that must just be acceptable collateral damage.

Ryan nodded. "So you have feral digimon on one hand, breaking through because they wanted to escape a stagnant world, and then you have digimon who want to be the hero by taking the window of opportunity to be the ones to apprehend the refugees, since these guys," he gestured at Shitomon, "haven't done the job yet."

That was likely what was going on with the emergent digimon-- the ones who were looking for them. They must have been followers of Dinmon, trying to apprehend the--   
Well.

"Rub it in, why don't you," Shitomon said sticking her tongue out again. "We'd been separated from each other. We weren't even sure we had ended up in the right world at in the first place, and that was _on top_ of being weakened by crossing over. We couldn't have done much of any good even if we had known we had ended up in the right place."

Natalie felt her heart sink into her stomach the more she thought about it, and instead she decided to prompt further. "Why are you telling us this now, then?" she said, frowning and folding her arms.

"Oh, right!" Shitomon said, coming back to the subject-- she was a bit easily distracted. "See, I had wondered why the refugee digimon hadn't been driven mad, like most digimon who had taken power from the corruption do," Shitomon said, perking up. "When we first saw the fights with your digimon, I thought that was what had happened, but when we ran into you -- the humans -- it complicated things. It made me think--"

"It made Lurumon think," Ryan corrected.

"... that _maybe_ the corruption had been dormant in them. I think, that way, they wouldn't be reckless, or get themselves into trouble until they were needed."

... they way Shitomon was talking about their digimon was disquieting, and Natalie and Sam both felt a distinct sense of unease. They exchanged sidelong glances.

"See? That's why the refugees claim they don't know anything," Shitomon continued, nodding resolutely. "They must not remember it. If the corruption in them _was_ dormant, then it could have had some defense mechanisms, to keep them from blowing their cover or giving themselves away."

"That didn't really answer her question," Sam said quietly, again, not really speaking to Shitomon but more to himself. Even so, this time, his comment _was_ heeded. (Sam seemed a little bit surprised, actually.)

Shitomon stood up on the table, gesturing with her palms up. "Right! So the point is that yesterday, I think _something_ activated the corruption somehow." She said _something_ in a way that suggested she quite well knew what that _something_ might be, even if not the _somehow_. In fact, so did Natalie and Sam.

Ratamon.

It was like the puzzle pieces were falling into place. Even if they didn't know what Ratamon had done-- he had run off with Natalie's digivice, and not long after that, their digimon had had that little seizure, with that familiar sound, and then...

"Ratamon is -- I think --"

"Eli thinks," Shitomon corrected with a smirk.

"... a servant of that corruption," Ryan continued, unfettered by Shitomon's interjection. "I think the way it works is something like... it's small and weak enough to cross between the worlds through the cracks relatively easily. It could carry out its will and scout information back and forth, and if there was a way to activate the corruption in your digimon," he said, gesturing with one hand, "well-- if anything would have known how to do that, Ratamon would."

"Which is why Doctorimon was able to digivolve to ultimate," Shitomon explained, a little bit excitedly. "Ratamon reactivated that piece of the corruption, and Doctorimon must have been able to draw power from that reactivated corruption inside him! I think _I_ was just able to digivolve further because of the heightened threat, but I have to admit that I don't know for sure."   
That seemed like a pretty major thing to handwave away, but there were more relevant things at hand.   
"But it makes sense, right? That's why he reached the next digivolution stage, and why he went off and started setting things on fire!"

Natalie and Sam exchanged glances; Sam shrugged one shoulder in a nonverbal _fucked if I have anything better_.   
"... well, shit," Natalie said, folding her arms and frowning, and both Shitomon and Ryan looked like they were relieved to hear that-- which, honestly, kind of pissed her off a little, but now was not the time. After all, there were still some massive pieces missing from that proverbial puzzle, but it was as compelling as any other argument they could have come up with on their own.

Shitomon hopped off the table so she was standing on the bench next to Ryan, and she placed her hands on the table proper. "So from there, I think it's obvious what we need to do, right?"

What?

"What?" Natalie said, furrowing her brow.

Shitomon blinked, like it was obvious. "Now that you're in agreement with us, you can see why we need to eliminate the refugees before they cause more damage. I mean, you seem to think my theory makes sense, so we thought you'd be on board--"

Ahah.

So that's what their angle was. Natalie felt kind of stupid for not catching onto it quicker. The _A, therefore B, therefore you should totally be on board with F_ while taking everything in between for granted sort of logic-- she felt like she should have seen it coming.   
Admittedly, most of her prior arguments with Ryan didn't quite reach this level of gravity, but still.

"You answered maybe half of the questions we've been working on. Appreciate it and all; still doesn't mean we're going to drop everything and tell you it's totally A-okay cool to kill our friends," Sam said, eyes on his phone but his voice acerbic.

"Did you think we were going to just--" Natalie said, pulling a face. " _Seriously?_ "

Ryan and Shitomon exchanged looks, and Ryan looked back to Natalie. "When you put it that way it sounds kind of douchey, but even if it sounds douchey, it's _right_ ," he said, frowning. He furrowed his brow, rubbing the back of his head. "I mean-- hell, Nat, you saw what that thing did downtown yesterday. Half of the property damage could have been avoided if he hadn't started setting shit on fire. If that's what even a little bit of that corruption can do then-- hell, I don't know what to tell you."

Shitomon put her hands on her hips and frowned, picking up as Ryan stopped. "Are you really going to prioritize yourselves over the good of everyone else?" she said, looking from Natalie to Sam; her tone wasn't quite _lecture-y_ , but it was close. "All it's going to do is cause more damage by prolonging things just for sentimental reasons."

"As much as you might like to think we're just being difficult for the sake of being contrary, or for-- _sentimental reasons_ ," Natalie said, feeling like 'sentimental reasons' was a pretty glib way of putting _trusting in your best friends of fifteen years and being cautious that there's more to this situation than can be dismissed in one history lesson from a holier-than-thou rabbit_ , "there's more to it." She sounded more confident than she felt, but fuck it, _fake it 'til you make it_.

Sam glanced sidelong at her and nodded once.

Ryan, though, was unimpressed. "Are you saying that because you actually think that," Ryan said, his voice condescending, "or do you just not want to be wrong?"   
It was clear what he thought the answer was. It sounded like he had rehearsed that line-- like had it pre-prepared in case things didn't go their way.

What followed was a few seconds where Ryan and Natalie stared each other down, each one refusing to be the first one to blink -- metaphorically speaking, anyway. It was only a few seconds, yes, but with the tension as high as it was, those seconds seemed to stretch into eternity.

"Let's go," Ryan said to Shitomon, standing up. "We've done all we can do for now. Better get out of here before it escalates."

"I just don't get why they want to have to fight over it," Shitomon muttered, folding her arms, but she nodded with a sigh. In a burst of red light, Ryan minimized her into his D-Rive-- and not a moment too soon, as a middle-aged woman in a tracksuit jogged around the bend, the first sign of human life they had seen in the park today aside from themselves.

That was as good a sign as any, one supposed.

Ryan nodded curtly to Natalie, didn't really acknowledge Sam at all (not that Sam minded this), and turned to walk back to wherever he had parked.

A few moments of silence passed, and Sam broke it in spectacular fashion once he was sure he wouldn't be overheard. He didn't even look up from his phone as he said:   
"Christ, what a douchebag. Why did you date him?"

 

Natalie paused before saying, "well, in fairness, I didn't know he had the tribal tattoo when I agreed to the first date."

Sam laughed dryly through his nose.

Natalie pulled her D-Rive out of her pocket. She looked down at it and turned it over in her hand. Shitomon's entire lecture was still sinking in, and she was having trouble picking out what to focus on.   
(That was a big fat lie -- because you get one guess what she was focusing on, and it involved _corruption_ and _five trusted acolytes_ and a snake-necked vulture who barely acknowledged her, but, you know, she didn't want to dwell on that right now.)

"I'm assuming that there _is_ more that they're missing," Natalie said, "because while I'm pretty sure there is, I'm blanking pretty hard, but the idea of admitting they might be right makes me want to throw myself in front of a train."

"You know, at some point, you might have to stop counting on me to keep track of everything," Sam said, and Natalie was half prepared to apologize, but Sam was smirking a little bit and looked quite pleased at being called upon for his -- well. Not expertise. _Memory and pattern-recognition_?   
"Nah, there's definitely some problem areas."

With impeccable dramatic timing, rain -- proper rain, not just half-assed drizzle drops-- began to fall.

"Explain it to me over text?" Natalie asked, standing up; she'd rather get back to her car now, rather than risk having to run through what felt like an imminent downpour.

"I was planning on it," Sam said, nodding as he, a few seconds later, stood up as well.

Natalie took off for her car, and Sam went in another direction -- presumably he had parked elsewhere. As Sam took a turn around a patch of trees, Natalie saw a quick flash of green light as Gelermon decided she couldn't keep her comments to herself any longer.

When Raumon materialized in the shotgun seat of Natalie's car, he sat with arms folded and brow furrowed. He was so lost in thought that he didn't even ask to get any food on the way back to the apartment.

 

***

"... so I gotta say I'm not _surprised_ ," Ryan said, shutting the door of his apartment behind him; he was picking up on a conversation he had been having with Shitomon on the drive. "Just frustrated as shit." As the door clicked closed, Shitomon appeared next to him, listening intently. He shook his head to shake the water out of his hair; in the time between leaving the park and driving back to his place the rain had started coming down, and so the walk from his car to his door had been a damp one.

"We tried," Shitomon said, turning her palms up. "I mean... it _was_ kind of a long shot, anyway. Not that I wasn't hoping for it, but."

"Yeah, I know," Ryan said, walking over and slumping down onto his couch. "But, _christ,_ man, I wonder how much of this is just because Natalie is still pissed at me. Like, I can't help but wonder if she'd be a bit more helpful if she didn't still hate my guts."

Shitomon frowned, and she climbed up onto the couch beside her partner.   
"I don't know if it would help, even if you were still on good terms," she said, careful not to make it come across as _lmao don't worry because they'd hate you anyway_. "It seems like they've got their own personal investments in the refugees."

She frowned, her mind drifting back to what Lurumon had said just yesterday-- that maybe things had changed -- but her own point still stood. Personal investment or not... she looked at her paws.

People had gotten hurt, now. _Human_ people. She'd kind of hoped that maybe, just maybe, the news of their own kind being caught in the crossfire... she had almost hoped that would be enough to get the humans to realize that there were more important things at stake than their friendships.

"Do you think they really know things we don't?" she asked, looking at her partner.

"Fucked if I know," Ryan said. He pulled his phone, wallet, and keys out of his pockets in turn and set them on the coffee table, but when he pulled his D-Rive out, he paused.   
These things were still a massive mystery. None of them seemed to know where they came from, or why-- or more importantly, why the Refugees had them, too. There _had_ to be things they were missing, they knew that; they weren't so ignorant as to assume they knew everything about this entire shitty situation, but...

(To say nothing of the fact that if the corruption had activated, it may already be too late to stop it and the best they could do was just try to take down the refugees before anyone else got hurt--)

"We're just going to have to be vigilant, I guess," Shitomon said, shaking her head. "I think I'll need to talk with Hulimon and Lurumon."

Ryan frowned and looked over at her, and nodded.

"Right."

 

***

_biggest hole in their story, and by hole i mean total gaping chasm, is everything about the d-rives,_ Sam explained in the group chat, following a recap of the conversation-slash-lecture. Natalie's suspicion that he had been taking notes was all but confirmed-- either that, or he just had a crazy good memory for keeping everything straight. She'd accept either.

 _How do you figure?_ Peter asked.

At the exact same time, a message from Xander came in: _ie: they have no fuckin clue about them either_

Sam's response was quick. _unless they're hiding information from us, i actually think they know less than we do. which is pretty impressive, if you think about it._

Natalie kept her eyes on her phone even as she didn't provide any commentary of her own. Raumon was seated next to her on her bed, occasionally peering over her arm to read the words on the screen. He hadn't needed the recap, so only now that Sam was getting into his own points was he tuning in.   
He wanted to wait for Sam's thoughts before he shared his own with Natalie. While she understood, she couldn't shake the unease of knowing he had things to say that he wasn't sharing.

 _my idea is this, and i could be way off base but hear me out:_  
theyre theorizing that the noise has something to do with the corruption shit getting activated   
more broadly, it has something to do with the corruption theyre playing at our digimon being backups for, right?   
remember the minimized digimon data bricking the old shit computer?   
and how plugging in the d-rive slaps a bandaid right over that shit   
i think these things are not unrelated

They could practically hear the frantic typing as Sam's fingers tried to keep up with his thoughts.

 _what?_ from Meghan, followed almost immediately by an _oh! right!_ ; she hadn't been present for that and had only heard about it second-hand. _but... wouldn't that mean that all the rest of the stuff, about them being like... you know? wouldn't that be true?_

 _Do we have a compelling reason to doubt it?_ Peter asked.

There was a pause as that sunk in.

The pasts of their digimon. This wasn't the first time the thought had been brought up, but it had been nebulous, questionable, and undefined. Now, even _a_ version of the story...

Unsurprisingly it was Xander who spoke up first.

 _look to your left or your right or wherever they're reading over your shoulder,_ Xander said, _and look in their eyes and tell me, yeah, that's totally the face of a seasoned evil monster. fuck that noise._

It was meant to be heartening, but Natalie found that it made her a little bit uneasy. She set her phone down face-down and sighed, slumping backwards. Raumon looked at her, and his ears twitched.

"Are you alright?" he asked for the second time today.

(It hadn't even been that bad, right?   
It could have been a lot worse.)

"I don't know," she admitted, sighing as she ran a hand backwards through her hair. Raumon nodded understandingly, and he paused before heaving a heavy sigh, and he looked like he was trying to find the right words to articulate what he had been turning over in his head for the past day, and even moreso for the past few hours. Natalie sat back up straight, attentive, as she realized that he was preparing to finally talk about what was on his mind.

"I don't think Shitomon is entirely wrong," he said slowly, and Natalie frowned. "There are things I have questions about, but," he looked down at his claws, "I think she's telling the truth that she knows."

Natalie pulled her knees to her chest. "What do you mean?"

Raumon thought for a moment, and shook his head. "I... hm. Let me put it this way. When we first had that... seizure thing, I felt like my brain was kickstarted. It felt like things and memories were just kind of slid back into place, but I couldn't quite make sense of them without the context."

Natalie didn't quite follow, but she decided not to interrupt just yet.

"And then, right before I became IlDoctorimon," Raumon said, looking at his claws before placing one over his heart, "I felt..." He sighed and tilted his head, unsure how to put it. "I felt like I remembered that I had forgotten something. I felt a surge of a very familiar feeling. I thought of a _time_ before I came to this world that I hadn't thought of in fifteen years. Whatever that seizure was, it definitely turned a key somewhere."

"Right," Natalie said, nodding.

"But then, when I digivolved into IlDoctorimon," he said slowly, "it felt... well, first of all it felt _wrong_ , like something that wasn't supposed to happening was forcing its way through, but it the same way as the seizure, at first. Like something forgotten was being brought back up, maybe not to the surface but dusted off. And when I had digivolved..." He frowned. "It felt... familiar, in a way. I felt like I was sleepwalking, or watching myself from the outside, even as I felt myself move."

"Like a dissociative episode?" Natalie provided, and Raumon nodded.

"Right!" he said. "But it was like-- like I was going through the motions of something familiar. If Shitomon was telling the truth... it would make sense, wouldn't it?"

Natalie frowned; none of this was making her feel better. She knew that it wasn't Raumon's job to make her feel better, but the more Raumon agreed with Shitomon's assessment, the worse she felt.

"And when she was telling us that explanation of events," Raumon continued, "it felt like being told something I'd forgotten, but knew I'd been told before."

Natalie felt a twinge of something uncomfortable, and she sighed in resignation. "So that's it, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is IlDoctorimon who you are? If all of what Shitomon said is true, then is that-- ?"

She didn't know what she meant by _that_. It meant a lot of things. A corrupted vulture monster without regard for his allies? A follower of some unknown evil? A backup drive for a world-eating corruption?   
Doomed to go mad because of that evil influence, now that it was active?

"I don't think so," Raumon said slowly.

Natalie swallowed around a lump in her throat: "Are you saying that because you think that, or just because--"

"If you quote Ryan, I'm going to Symptom Claw you into the next century," Raumon snapped huffily, and Natalie couldn't help but smile a little bit just at his immediate reaction. "I don't think it's who I am, and I don't think you're doing the wrong thing by not wanting to turn me over."

Natalie wondered how Raumon was able to discern what was on her mind even without being told-- but then she remembered he had been her best friend for the past fifteen years.   
But Ryan and Shitomon's words did stick in her mind-- she couldn't shake the idea that she was willingly throwing who knew how much under the bus for the sake of her friendship with Raumon, for the sake of not wanting to be wrong, for wanting to be the hero in this story--

"So I don't think Shitomon is wrong," Raumon said, cutting through her thoughts, "but I don't think she's entirely right. I think there's things we understand about it that she doesn't, and there's parts that neither of us know. If it were as simple as just turning us over, I feel like we wouldn't have the D-Rives. We wouldn't have the means to fight back, and we wouldn't have something apparently so intrinsically related to--" he gestured with his claws, "all of this."

"I suppose," Natalie said, but she couldn't quite shake the doubt. She looked at her phone set on the bed next to her; it was still buzzing occasionally with message notifications.

"Back when this first started," she said, slowly, still looking at her phone, "I thought it was cool as shit. I thought we were going to be the heroes, you know?" She smiled, a bit bitterly. "But every time we get involved, it feels like things start going wrong, but I was okay with it, because it was up to us! We had to. We were the only ones who could do anything."   
She hesitated, and sighed.   
"But it's not. There's Ryan and-- what are their names? Jen and Eli? And their digimon. They cause a hell of a lot less damage than us. Digimon don't come after _them_. It feels like we're the problem that needs solving, or the ones getting in the way."

"How many digimon incidents would have gotten way worse if we didn't get involved?" Raumon countered. "A lot of the damage yesterday was caused by the digimon who showed up before Draugmon. If Xander and Meghan and Sam hadn't interfered, they might have hurt more people and caused even more damage before Ryan," he said like one might say _fungal infection_ , "and company did. Imagine how badly people would freak out if they had seen half of the digimon we've taken care of, and how much more damage they'd have done without us."

Natalie sighed and tilted her head to one side. "Right. You're right." She bit the inside of her mouth in thought. "But those have all been champions. What are we supposed to do if something else like Draugmon happens? I don't-- I don't think we should run the risk of IlDoctorimon again."

Raumon looked at Natalie and frowned, but he nodded slowly. "I understand that. But if it helps--" He paused, looking out the window as he thought of how to put it. The rain was falling still, and it beat a pattering, calming rhythm against the glass.   
"When I heard your voice, I came back into my senses a little bit. When I hesitated, when Eudaemon got that last blow on me, it was because you called out to me, and I heard you long enough to stop."

Natalie blinked. She hadn't been entirely sure that that momentary hesitation had been intentional or not-- but it _had_ been the opening Eudaemon needed to hit him hard enough to force him to de-digivolve, hadn't it?   
"It took me like ten tries," she said, shaking her head.

Raumon nodded solemnly, his expression serious as he thought hard. "That's true."

"I just... don't want you to be in that position again."

Raumon paused, and looked over at her. "You can't control if it happens, you know," he said gently. "And if it's down to me digivolving or letting you or any of our friends -- or anyone -- be in danger, I might have to choose to digivolve."

Natalie thought of IlDoctorimon-- not just the pain he caused, but the pain he seemed to have been in as he digivolved, and she felt a pang in her chest.   
"But what if you do more harm than good?"

There was a long pause.

"Then you'll have to be there, yelling at me until I come back to my senses."

Natalie looked over at Raumon with a vaguely incredulous expression, but she met his gaze, and she realized she hadn't really looked him in the face since yesterday. She saw the familiar, friendly (if slightly eerie) white-masked face of Raumon, a subtle sympathetic expression on what few features he had, and she felt the smallest pinpricks of wetness gather in her eyes, which she quickly blinked away.

"You'd better not scare me again like that, you jerk."

"I make no promises."

Natalie shook her head with a huffed laugh as she stood up. She'd catch up with the group chat's assessments later. Right now, she was the kind of hungry that only a milkshake and a chicken sandwich could satisfy.


	16. Episode 16: Kill the DJ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter in the bag, and there's more where that came from, folks! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ  
> I may or may not come back and add another screenshot in future, but we'll see how I'm feeling. For now, we're good, though!
> 
> General site updates and some profile stuff, too, so you should go check those out on the site (recon.digimonreset.com) if you so fancy. And awaaaay we go!

" _And I---_ "

Sour guitar notes followed, and Xander hissed through his teeth.   
There was a reason he had practically leapt at the chance to make Paul play guitar when they had decided to form Ekko Lokation-- it had never been his strong point, even though he was _competent_ at it, and now that he hadn't practiced regularly in ages, he was remembering this fact vividly.

He tried again, just trying to get the basic lead down, but with that came a little less focus on the lyrics, even as he kept the tune.

" _And I... am going to throw myself in front of a motherfucking train if this stupid guitar doesn't start cooperating instead of being a little bitch--_ "

"I like these new lyrics," Desmon piped up across the room. "Maybe 'off a motherfucking cliff' would be better, instead of "in front of a motherfucking train"? It fits your meter better."

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Xander said flatly, reaching over the guitar to the pen and pad of paper sitting on the messy coffee table in front of him. It was covered in scratched-out notes and hasty re-writes, to the point where it was borderline unreadable.

If he made any significant progress worth keeping, he'd have to rewrite it, but he only barely seemed to register that fact.

It had... been a rough couple days, let's leave it at that.

It was only the day after Natalie had had her airquotes discussion with Ryan, and so only two days since Draugmon had ruined everything for everyone. The garage he worked at was only a short ways out of downtown, which meant that it was impossible not to hear about it; the news was still understandably enough clogged up with it, and of course, every so often his phone would go off with notifications about some aspect of it that the others were overthinking.   
So, yeah, he was fairly well entrenched in this last thing in his life that Digimon bullshit _hadn't_ infected yet.

Admittedly, he could probably put this song off; it wasn't _urgent_ , and there were probably more important things he could be focusing on, even in regards to the band considering they had lined up another show in a couple weeks, but... eh, let him have this.

"Your phone's going off again," Desmon pointed out from her hammock, her ears twitching; said phone was across the room, buried under Xander's discarded work shirt and pants. He had been in such a hurry to switch into something less _depressing_ that he hadn't cared about throwing them into the half-broken laundry basket. He hadn't taken his ringer off vibrate, and the clothes were muffling it. "You want me to check it?"

Xander sighed through his nose. "Yeah, sure. Tell me if it's anyone I actually want to talk to."

Desmon hopped down to the floor and over to the pile of discarded clothes. She fished Xander's phone out while it was still buzzing away. "Oh, cool!" she said, and she beamed as she skip-flapped her way over to her partner.

Xander paused scribbling notes to look over the back of the couch. "What the fuck could it possibly be, unless you entered me in some kind of fuckin'... _free pizza for life_ sweepstakes?"

"It's Mikey!"

Xander blinked, momentarily taken aback.

"Shit, really? Give it here," he said and Desmon did just that, and he slid his thumb across the screen to accept the call.   
"Hey, Mike, dude, sup?" he said, lifting the phone to his ear and cradling it between his head and his shoulder as he set the poor, out-of-tune guitar aside. There was a pause, wherein Desmon twitched her ears to listen in, but the static of the phone made it hard for her to pick out the words.   
"Same to you, you evasive bastard," Xander said, smirking.

Realizing she would have a hard time eavesdropping like this, she quickly developed a _cunning plan_.

"Free pizza for life would be _hella_ though," Desmon mused louder than she really needed to, then popped her head back over the back of Xander's futon. "Say hi for me!")

"One sec, I'm putting you on speaker so Desmon doesn't try to talk into my ear the entire fuckin' time," Xander said, doing just that and setting his phone on the table in front of him.   
This was, in fact, Desmon's plan, and she was happy it had worked so efficiently. (Well, less happy than she could have been, considering this was the same plan she came up with every time she wanted to listen in on a phone call, and she was ninety percent sure Xander knew this...   
Eh, still happy about it.)

"Hi, Mikey!" Desmon chirped, kicking into the air and even going to the effort of flying over the back of the couch so she could drop down next to Xander.

"Hail up, ya giant flying rat," the voice of Xander's brother came over the phone. He, like Desmon, had the uncanny ability to make it clear when he was grinning just with his voice. "As I was just saying to Alex, it's good to hear you aren't dead yet."   
(Xander winced a little bit at being referred to by that derivation of his name, because _lord_ did he not go by that if it was ever possible, but he had given up the futile endeavor of trying to get anyone in his family to change it up.)

"You're one to talk," Xander said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

"I'm not the one who's right in the heart of the shitshow. It's not often I get to say that, you know."

See, this requires some explanation. Xander's older brother, Michael -- Mikey to Desmon, and Mike to everyone who wasn't Desmon and who didn't want to get punched in the mouth -- was chronically difficult to get in contact with. He was one of those people who didn't have a social media presence at all, not least of all because he spent a whole lot of his time both in other countries and the extremely rural parts of _this_ country, doing work with various humanitarian groups and his church, from developing nations to reservations.

Yes, the contrast between him and Xander was _hilariously_ pronounced and obvious, thanks for asking-- and indeed, it _was_ rare that he got to say that it wasn't _him_ in the thick of things.

"So I take it you've been filled in on the shitshow?" Xander asked, weighing his words carefully, trying to judge how much Mike knew without shooting his mouth off.

"Well, when your hometown is all over every news site and station in the country, you take a little bit of notice," Mike replied, probably shrugging on the other end of the line, and Xander groaned. "And I only know one blue bat monster, I was thinking there might be some connection between her and the giant blue bat thing I saw on the news."

"Hey, it could be _anyone's_ blue bat monster, this is unfair," Desmon said, and Xander gave her a gentle thwap on the back of the head.

"Cool," he muttered sarcastically, scratching the back of his neck.

"So you do have something to do with it, then?" Mike said

Xander looked at Desmon, who looked back at him cheerfully; he looked at his D-Rive, set (thrown) on the corner of the coffee table haphazardly; and he sighed.   
"Eh."

"So that's a yes."

"Fuck you."

" _Definitely_ a yes." Mike snorted a laugh, and Xander swore under his breath. "You oughta call--"

Xander cut him off. "If you say mom and dad, I'm going to lose my _shit,_ " he said, curling his lip in disdain. "Fuck no. I already got the passive aggressive wall post from hell from mom."

"Well, in fairness, have you actually talked to them?" Mike prompted.

"They know I'm alive and not in the hospital," Xander said, which was not an answer to the question. "That should be enough. I don't really want to give them any ammunition, and even putting that aside, I sure as _fuck_ don't want to sit through the inevitable 45 minute phone lecture about how I need to find Jesus and get a four-year degree, preferably in that fuckin' order." He paused, and sighed, slumping back. "So, yeah, no."

"I can't argue that's probably what'd happen," Mike said, then sighed. "It's your life, Alex. I sure ain't going to tell you what to do with it, but if you do have something to do with all this, whatever it is, you should at least let them know what's up."

"Suggestion acknowledged," Xander said sharply, sitting back and tucking his hands behind his head; Desmon gave him a funny look, right up until he followed up with, "and summarily thrown into the fuckin' trash."   
Desmon nodded sagely.

It wasn't that she _hated_ Xander's parents, and she knew he didn't either -- not _really_ \-- but just about every time they interacted anymore it ended up going horribly south, which was a bad time for everyone involved. While Xander frequently got _frustrated_ , few things made him as-- well, _upset_ felt like a poor word, but 'angry' didn't quite cover it, so it would have to do -- upset as dealing with family bullshit.   
(The fact that they had never been especially fond of her certainly didn't hurt her stance.)

"You know what? Fair enough," Mike conceded, and there was a brief pause. "So, explain to me: what _is_ the level of your involvement here? You know, I'm just curious and all."

"Oh, you can just fuck right off," Xander said, smirking a bit despite himself. "It's a goddamn long story."

"Clearly, you should explain it to me at some point in the near future," Mike said, and Xander furrowed his brow until he continued speaking. "Which provides a nice segue. The reason I called was actually _not_ to try and shame you into speaking to our parents so much as it was to tell you I'm going to be getting into town this weekend, and was wondering if you wanted to get a couple drinks or something."

Desmon waggled her eyebrows at Xander, and mouthed the words _get crunk_ ; he rolled his eyes at her.

 

"You've proposed worse ideas," he admitted after a moment.

 

***

A young woman sighed as she walked past the corner shops and cafes and Mediterranean-Ethiopian fusion hole-in-the-wall restaurants that she had sworn hadn't been there last week-- or maybe they had. It was a crapshoot.

Her mind had been kind of... elsewhere the past couple days.   
She felt she had a pretty damn good reason to, but it was the kind of reason that was hard to explain to anyone who wasn't in the know, which meant that she would get no sympathy from her coworkers, her bosses, or the randos on the street.

After all, 'my best friend, the giant talking badger, went mysteriously missing a few days ago, my apartment is a metaphorical disaster zone, and the downtown is recovering from being a literal disaster zone, and all three of these facts are related' is... a bit _much._

She sighed and pulled a very familiar little black device out of her purse. She pressed the buttons; she wasn't sure why. While it still turned on, it barely functioned; the screen would light up, but the radar was blank, and none of the other options in the menu were even active. It was like as soon as Brockmon had gone missing, her D-Rive was as good as a paperweight.

It didn't exactly inspire a whole lot of confidence, you know?

But she couldn't exactly _tell_ anyone all of this. She still had to go in to work; she still had to power through it. Honestly, she thought, maybe that was for the better-- to keep herself busy and occupied, instead of dwelling in the dark.

She had decided already that she was either going to go out this weekend or die trying. She needed it even more than usual.

She knew she had to work out a plan. She knew, intellectually, that she _had_ to try and make contact with the other digimon in the city, but right now... well, she couldn't go knocking door to door. She'd have to wait until there was an opportunity, and since 'opportunity' meant 'attack', she wasn't praying for anything to happen any time soon.

She sighed heavily and shouldered open the door of the flower shop at which she worked.   
" _You're_ early, Lily," the owner of the shop, standing behind the counter, remarked, looking up with some surprise.

"Am I?" she said, feigning ignorance; she knew full well that she was. She had tried to spend as little time in her apartment as she could, the past couple days; even with as small as it was, it felt entirely too big and too empty without Brockmon in it.

"It's actually really fortuitous, you know, Marissa called out sick, something about her car being in for repairs, so it's just been me, and..."

Lily sighed through her nose, stretching her arms above her head. She'd just have to focus on what was right in front of her, for now, and for right now, that was not digimon.

 

***

Honestly, the fact that nothing had happened since Frosty the Bad-Time Bear (which, by the way, as a _flawless_ nickname for Draugmon as far as Desmon was concerned, even if nobody else seemed to want to help make it a Thing) was cause for more alarm than any relaxation.   
The fact that they felt _less_ at ease when digimon attacks _weren't_ happening had to be some sort of horrible reflection on... something.

"I'm pretty sure the only reason I haven't gotten a more exact lecture is because she doesn't have enough new material since the last time," Meghan said, sighing heavily and slumping her shoulders.

It was the following Friday afternoon. She had only worked a half-shift today, and Xander was clocked out on his lunch break; Meg had dropped by before going home, since it was one of the only chances she really had _had_ to do so-- as she was in the middle of explaining.   
This had all come about because Xander had invited Meghan to the next Ekko Lokation show they were doing closer to the end of the month, if she wanted to take pictures again or just come for shits and giggles.

"Your mother still on that?" Xander asked, sitting on the hood of his car with his elbows resting on his knees.   
Out of all of them, it seemed that Meghan was the one who struggled the most with family concerns -- Sam's father was borderline absent, Peter's mother was hardly aware of Peter's involvement in any of this digimon crap, Natalie's parents didn't seem to pay attention to anything their daughter was doing, and Xander... well. That's been covered.

That left only Meghan, who was still struggling with her mother being very, very concerned about digimon attacks and the danger of Meg being involved in any of it, which was very clearly starting to wear on her. Xander noticed she seemed a bit more harried than usual, just by virtue of having been fairly cooped up since Draugmon ruined everything for everyone, forever, and Xander found himself pretty frustrated by proxy.   
(He was _usually_ frustrated about _something_ , but, you know.)

"I mean, half the downtown kind of got wrecked," Meghan admitted, looking in the direction thereof and furrowing her brow. "I understand why she's worried, it's just-- I don't know, I can't help but feel like any time I leave the house for anything other than work she's afraid I'm going to get crushed by falling debris or something."

"Fuck'er and do what you want anyway. What's the worst she's gonna do?" Xander said, leaning back. "She can't take your car since you need it for work and school, and she doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd flip out and kick you out so much as just go paranoid white suburban mom on you."

Meghan put her hands on her hips and sighed. "Even _if_ all she does is try to convince me more that Oremon is dangerous, even if she _can't_ do anything about it, it's just gonna make it more and more stressful, you know?"

"It's gonna be stressful, anyway," Xander argued, "so, you know, why not go balls to the wall on it and cut the bullshit? S'not like she can realistically stop you from first of all being a fuckin' adult and going out on your own time, and second of all from being implicated in this digimon shit." He snorted. "I'm pretty sure even if you tried to stay out of it it'd come to us, anyway, so I mean, fuck it, go for broke and give yourself one less fuckin' thing to worry about."

"You know, I know you're trying to be helpful -- or at least I think you are?" Meghan said, hands still on her hips, "but it's not _terribly_ useful if every time, your solution is generally the nuclear option."

"It's worked pretty well for _me_ so far," Xander said dryly, shrugging one shoulder.

"You've also punched, like, at least two people in the past month," Meghan pointed out. Xander frowned slightly, while she ammended.   
"I mean, like-- I know the first time was kind of weird, since from what Natalie said you didn't start it? And I'm pretty sure we all wanted to punch Ryan, but it's still two more people than I'm used to the people I've interacted with having punched. Unless you count Oremon, and digimon fights as punching, but I don't think that counts."

"What's this got to do with whether or not I'm right?" he said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

Meghan sighed and thought over what she meant to say for a moment. "Just, your advice tends to be very 'torch it and run', which doesn't seem to me like part of the world's best long-term all-situation strategy, you know?"

Xander snorted through his nose. "Well, you're under no obligation to take my advice," he said a little defensively, shrugging one shoulder. "Just calling it how I see it."

"Right," Meghan said with a nod, sighing and twiddling a little bit with a bit of her hair.

"Anyway, the original offer still stands," Xander said. "Assuming you're able to get away from she who must be obeyed, you're free to come."

"I'll keep it in mind," Meghan said; she nodded with a smile, but Xander couldn't help but hear it as a _we'll see_. "You heading back in, then?" she asked, tilting her head as Xander slid off of his car. His break was just about over; he'd have to go clock back in any minute now.

"Yeah," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "I'll see you later."

"Later! Have fun with your brother!" she said, turning to begin the short jaunt back to where she had parked; she turned around and walked backwards for a few seconds to wave, and Xander lifted a hand in acknowledgement thereof.

He dropped his hand back down and stuffed it into his pocket, humming through his nose as he turned to go back inside and clock back in.   
Man. Fuck this.

 

***

"You break," Mike said, tossing a pool cue from the rack over to Xander, who grabbed it out of the air before it smacked him in the face.

This place was only a half-step up from a complete and utter dump of a dive bar, which meant it was absolutely ideal. Xander and his brother were camped out in the farthest corner, lit as much by the old neon signs on the wall as much as any proper lighting; they had laid claim to the less-decrepit of the two pool tables, and had created as much of a little oasis for themselves as they possibly could, considering they were downtown on a Friday night.

Then again, making fun of drunk people and bitching about the jukebox was half of the _point_.

"Christ, _we_ sound better than half the crap these people listen to," Xander muttered, "and we're fuckin' hot garbage."

"Still doing the--" Mike said, pausing while Xander took the break shot. "-- the band thing, I take it?"

"'Band thing'," Xander repeated, looking over at Mike with a quirked eyebrow; they spoke as they exchanged pool shots. Neither of them had played the game in ages, and they were only half paying attention to it in the first place, so neither was doing a particularly impressive job.

"Hey, don't blame me if I can't remember. You guys changed the name every two fuckin' weeks for like three years. What is it now? Is it still Clones Criterion?"

"That was only for like, three days," Xander shot back immediately, shaking his head. "S'been Ekko Lokation--" and he rapid-fire spelled it out -- "for the last year. We actually started booking shit so we had to stop the name-changing shit."

"Colour me surprised," Mike said, raising both eyebrows; Xander rolled his eyes. "At the deciding on a name, I mean, not actually booking gigs. Considering how damn into it you always were, I'm not shocked you're finally making headway."

"Yeah, well," Xander said and shrugged, "it's just about the only goddamn thing in my life anymore that isn't hot garbage and goddamn _monsters_. I'd have lost my shit a lot sooner if not for it."

"That segues me fairly well, actually," Mike said, and Xander felt a creeping sense of dread. "Tell me: what's been up with batgirl? She looked significantly more familiar than the giant bat-thing I saw on the news. I was kind of disappointed, actually, was totally hoping she was just a -- what? Ten foot tall bat-dragon? -- all the time now."

"Christ, I don't even know where to start," Xander said, shaking his head and, to punctuate it, draining his glass. (He was going to need a couple more drinks if he had to explain it all.)

"We've got time.

"Public space, dude," Xander pointed out.

Mike didn't seem perturbed. "If anyone overhears you, they're close enough that I wouldn't judge you too hard for decking them."

Xander snorted derisively. (Hm.)   
"Cliffnotes version is that bigger monsters with even bigger attitude problems than her," by which he meant Desmon, obviously, "started wrecking shit here and there a couple months back and she decided the solution to that was to beat them up."

"Sounds like something she'd do." Beat. "A couple months ago? What's the timeline on this, exactly?"

Xander shrugged one shoulder as he grabbed his drink. "Back in like, May, and I ain't even touched on the magical handheld from space or the fucking squirrel or the goddamn... rabbit with delusions of grandeur."

Mike paused, and looked over at Xander, then pointedly at the drink he had already finished. "Riiight. Do I need to cut you off already, or are the nice young men in the clean white coats gonna be bursting in here to take you away, ha-ha?

"Oh, fuck _right off_ ," Xander said, folding his arms and smirking humorlessly. "I told you it's a long fuckin' story."

"I'm realizing that much."

"Last chance to puss out and let me not explain."

"What kind of sibling would I be if I didn't make you suffer?"

Xander groaned and, over the next few mintues, gave his brother an extremely abridged version of the past couple months, his vague understanding of the D-Rives, of _the fucking squirrel_ (Ratamon), and the douche parade. He mentioned keeping Desmon on-hand at all times, just in case any goddamn thing he was doing got interrupted.   
He cut out a lot of parts -- most of the details in general, and he only really covered what he himself had been a part of, and since he out of everyone was the least concerned with the hows and whys so much as the _hey I'd like shit to stop getting broken so I can live my goddamn life_ , he completely left out any discussion of the corruption bullshit, which, yes, made it hard to explain IlDoctorimon, but _that wasn't the point._   
(Mike for his part mostly just let Xander explain, prompting only when necessary, and patiently waiting through the parts where some halfway-buzzed asshole was getting close enough that Xander decided not to shoot his mouth off.)

"So, like, correct me if I'm wrong here," Michael said as Xander got through explaining what had happened last week, "but you're not running around alone full vigilante style, right?"

"There's other people with digimon, yes," Xander said, stepping up to the table. "Most of them are some brand of fucking annoying."

"I mean, you call your bandmates -- and every other friend you've ever had as long as I've known you -- 'fucking annoying' on the regular, too, so you're going to have to be more specific." Mike did air quotes around 'fucking annoying', which Xander in fact found _immaculately_ annoying.

Regardless. Xander snorted, took a moment to tally up, and started counting on his fingers. "Hipster douche needs to jump into the river. His ghost thing's kind of a doormat but whatever. Natalie's alright-- she's got the bird... plague doctor thing. Sam's a fuckin' nerd-ass NEET far as I can tell, and his weird dog thing is annoying but they generally keep out of everyone's hair unless there's shit that needs fighting. Douchebag McShades, Ponytail, Token Chick, and their small fuzzy animal brigade can get fucked."

He was, of course, leaving one out.   
... fuck off.

"Sounds like you've been having fun, then," Mike said dryly, and Xander snorted.

"Cool idea: let's talk about something, _anything,_ fuckin' else."

"Hey, sue me, I'm interested in it when my little brother gets involved in monster attacks. I'd say that's fair."

"For the ten billionth time, fuck off, dude."

 

***

It shouldn't have been possible to lose a giant icy death monster, but _life was just full of surprises._ Ratamon decided he'd do one more scout around the area just to see if there wasn't some crevice or hole or that Draugmon had found his way into (or, hell, created) before he considered that he might have slipped through the cracks.

Or, specifically, _a_ crack.

... what a pain.

He was starting to wonder if he might have to step up his own game a little bit if he was going to have to try and corral this stupid thing on the regular. It had already been enough of a pain, and... well, the cracks were only going to get worse (better?) from here, and if they were were going to be permeable... Well, he could live with a little collateral damage -- not really his problem! -- but he didn't want to run the risk of anyone killing anyone they weren't supposed to, and with all the other things he had to be dealing with...

Ratamon was quick, and Ratamon was clever, but this kind of speed-chess, keeping all these balls in the air, wasn't really his forte.

He'd consider putting in an application for consideration, so to speak.

...

But first things first.

 

***

To Xander's immense relief, they did switch conversational gears when he asked to, which improved Xander's mood almost immediately. They had gone through a couple drinks each and a couple games of pool, just enough to keep anyone else from invading their little corner.   
(Xander's win streak thus far was three to zero.)

"-- and he stood up, pointed a finger at me, and yelled --" Mike affected a voice, and for purposes of demonstration, he pointed a finger at Xander, "'people like _YOU_ are why _GOD,_ " and he pointed his accusatory finger straight up at the sky, "doesn't _TALK TO US ANYMORE!_ '"   
Beat, which Mike filled with a sip of his drink and sitting back in his seat.   
"He didn't appreciate my theological puns, is what I'm saying."

"To be fair, _I_ don't fuckin' appreciate them either," Xander said, smirking then humming quietly. "Mostly because nobody fuckin' likes puns," (he could practically hear Desmon's offended gasp), "but also 'cause I don't know how you can deal with that shit you do. I'd've thought you'd've gotten just as sick of it from mom and dad as I did."   
In this case, _that shit you do_ meant the work Mike did with his church, since Xander's own experience with the matter -- on all fronts -- was roughly 'walking out with middle fingers flying'.

"It's different, you know," Mike said, shrugging one shoulder. "A lot less of the _repent all ye sinners_ and a lot more on the _don't be dicks to each other_."

"S'all the same to me," Xander said, shaking his head.

"Well, yeah, makes sense, seeing as being a dick to people _is_ your religion."

"Damn fuckin' _straight_ it is." Xander snorted.

Mike put up his hands in a faux-defensive way, a sort of _whoa-there_ motion. "Far be it from me to tell you otherwise."

"I've said it before: I sure as fuck ain't goin' up, so if I'm goin' down, I'm goin' down on my terms-- which means _in fuckin' flames_."

They continued their banter, laden as it was with insults and insistent requests that the other go fuck himself -- as brothers are wont to do.

Then, for about three seconds, the power completely died.

The confusion was palpable as the entire bar -- every sign, light, and jukebox blaring _Alice's Restaurant_ for the third loop because some asshole thought they were clever -- completely powered down, leaving the clientelle in the dark both metaphorically and quite literally. Even the lights outside, visible only barely through the tinted glass windows at the front of the bar, seemed to have given up.   
Before anyone had the chance to really contemplate it, though, the power flickered back on with a quick whiff of ozone and a staticky crackle.

"Fuckin' weird," Mike muttered, looking quizzically over at the bar -- where the staff were exchanging just as confused looks.

Xander, though, had a deep and sinking feeling. He swore under his breath as he pulled his D-Rive out of his pocket.

They usually didn't cause _full on power outages_ , right? Usually just the flickering shit-- maybe it was just a trick of the shitty old wiring. He had a glimmer of hope when he saw that the screen hadn't activated on its own-- but then he noticed that the radar option _was_ active, and since he couldn't remember whether or not it was always like that -- spoilers: it wasn't -- he figured he should probably check.

Indeed, sure as anything, there was a shining dot on the D-Rive's radar.

" _Fuck,_ " Xander muttered; Mike raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing.

Xander already had a bad feeling, and that bad feeling was only made worse when he thumbed over it and it brought up a garbled name that was just, _just_ readable enough to be familiar.

_D̷̡̕r̷̡a͡͡͡͏u̵͜͝g̷̷m̨̛҉̴̶_

He hissed, getting up in such an inelegant hurry that he knocked over his glass.

By the time he got outside, he could already hear sirens in the distance, and he hissed some profanities that were definitely not quiet enough. This is a diplomatic way to say he said _fuck_ very loudly on a street with quite a few people going about their business, and he got a couple strange looks for it.   
(Which, admittedly, when someone stumbles out of a bar on a Friday night at half past nine and starts swearing, there _are_ a couple things you might expect of them, but he was only really _buzzed_ , not even _drunk_ yet.)

_draugmon. downtown._ he shot off in a group message to the chat, for all the good it'd do, and he tried to come up with a plan.

He didn't want to just go charging in and start attacking if it would cause more problems than it'd solve, but chances were good that Draugmon's level of regard for structural integrity of buildings was suspect, and they were probably the only ones who could--

Christ, maybe Natalie's constant lectures about _we're the only ones that can help_ was starting to rub off on him.

The moment they got to a place where Desmon could have come out, she did, and she wasted no time in evolving up into Corymon and taking off into the air with Xander on her back.   
"So, do we have a plan, here?" Corymon asked as they rose into the air, trying to get high enough to get a good look at their surroundings and situation.

"Do we ever?" Xander muttered, and Corymon nodded her head once after a brief pause.

"Why didn't you tell Mikey where you were going?" she asked as she began to fly towards the sirens.

"S'not really his problem, is it?" Xander said back through grit teeth. He was very, very glad he hadn't had that much to drink, because giant bat was not the smoothest mode of transport.

"He's going to worry, I bet."

"Since when is _that_ the kind of thing _you_ care about?"

"Since never, I'm just saying, it's true," Corymon said blithely, and she would have shrugged if she weren't busy flapping her wings. Xander frowned but chose not to comment, furrowing his brow and trying to figure out what they were going to do.

"Oh, shit!" Corymon hissed, and it was quickly apparent why.

 

***

Draugmon was moving with intent-- he wasn't simply wandering, like he had been the first time.

He had somewhere he wanted to be, and frankly, if there were buildings or people in the way of that, that was too damn bad for those buildings and those people.

After days of smashing himself into solid rock, rearing his head down and smashing his skeletal face and the massive spikes of solid ice on his shoulders into the relatively flimsy concrete and brick, drywall and glass, was nothing.

People were screaming, and sirens were wailing, and the chopping of a helicopter's blades filled the air-- a police helicopter? Army? Certainly not a news one, at any rate, judging by the fact that the sound of gunfire joined the rest of the cacophony, and Draugmon vaguely felt bullets sink into his frozen hide. It was irritating more than painful, and it was too _damn loud_.

"Hypothermia," he said, the words coming out about as coherently as ever -- a faint hiss of air, outdone entirely by the icy mist that poured out of his jaws, solidifying into icicles.

The helicopter wasn't a problem for very long; it crashed to the ground, easily felled by the spear of ice.

It only seemed to make the sirens louder, and Draugmon hissed, more icy mist spilling out of his mouth as his white-fire pupils constricted.

 

***

It was this helicopter being icicle-sniped out of the sky that inspired Corymon's profanity, but, hey, on the bright side, it made it _very evident_ where they had to go! Looking for positives, right?

... right.

"Drop me off on the ground," Xander said quickly, "a block away or something. I'll make up the difference and meet up with you without risking being fuckin' impaled. I'll-- fuck, we'll hope to god someone else can come help out. Just focus on not getting hit and keeping it busy, I guess? Fucked if I know."

Corymon glanced over her shoulder and nodded. "Roger-dodger," she said. A few minutes later, they had drawn close, Corymon had deposited Xander on the ground, and she had taken back off into the air to fly the whole two blocks between this impromptu drop-off point and Frosty the Bad-Time Bear, which was already close enough to start to feel the bone-chilling cold that surrounded Draugmon.   
Just in case he had vaguely hoped that, maybe, it would disappear again. No such luck.

Xander ignored every signal and person telling him to stay away, and when he made it onto the proper street, just down the street from and behind the giant icy monster, he was just in time to see Corymon soar overhead, razor-sharp winds beginning to swirl around her. He cast a cautious look up the street, taking a quick tally; his guess that Draugmon wasn't particulary concerned with not wrecking shit was right.

He glanced to the side and saw emergency personel trying to rush in to manage the people who had been in the downed chopper; there was no fucking way they weren't injured, if not--

_Dammit._

"Hurricane Blitz!" Corymon yelled from overhead. She swooped down towards Draugmon as the air whipped into a wild sphere around her, and she pulled out of her dive at the last moment. The ball of wind continued going and smashed into the back of Draugmon's head, dissipating some of the icy mist that had gathered around the skull-faced digimon's shoulders.

Draugmon hissed and turned around to see the bat who was currently frantically backpedalling away through the air. Draugmon still was bad at turning, and took out a parked car under one heavy foot as he maneuvered himself.

"Hey, buuuuddy," Corymon said, more to herself than really expecting Draugmon to pay attention to anything she said. "Nice to see you again, oughta catch up, you know, my buddy down there just had a catch-up with--"

"Black Ice," Draugmon hissed, icy energy swirling around his claws. He slashed through the air, the trails of energy leaving crescent-shaped blades of ice that soared straight for Corymon. Thankfully (and in fact, she had quite deliberately made sure) there was nothing behind her; when she dodged, feinting to one side, the icy attack sailed into open air, and began to sublimate into a foggy vapor when it was clear it wasn't going to hit its target.

"Right, somehow I forgot you weren't the talking type," Corymon said, gritting her teeth. "Black Stinger!" she yelled, firing off a round of shots from her tail-point, but they accomplished very little, as Draugmon merely swiped one huge paw and dispersed them with ease.

Xander was used to Corymon's constant talking, but her banter seemed a little more nervous than usual, and he couldn't say he couldn't figure out why, as Draugmon began to advance on her.

One time. Just one damn time, Xander wanted to _not have to deal with this shit._ He wanted someone else to be on-hand, or at least to have _one night_ where his attempts to do something other than work didn't end in a goddamn digimon incident.   
(Okay, it wasn't literally _every time_ , but it damn well felt like it.)

"Hypothermia," Draugmon hissed, icicles forming over its shoulders and subsequently flying at Corymon. Corymon feinted to the side again as she had with Draugmon's last attack, but--   
But she could hear clear as day that there were more helicopters approaching, and she wasn't entirely confident in her ability to keep Draugmon occupied without turning into freeze-dried bat, herself.

"Dammit," Xander hissed, his eyes focused on Corymon's attempts to occupy Draugmon so much that he didn't notice other aspects of his surroundings, like, for instance--

"Young man," a voice came over a police loudspeaker from down the block, voice firm and urgent, "you need to clear the area--"

Xander glanced over his shoulder and spotted the impromptu police barricade from which the sound was coming, and his stance immediately became defensive. "Shit, not now," he muttered through grit teeth, looking back up at Corymon.

"-- so that we may take appropriate measures to eliminate the threats--"

"Yeah, yeah, I fuckin' heard!" he snapped back, even though he had no chance of being heard; it was really for his own benefit as much as anyone.

"Please clear the area," the officer said, voice crackling over the speakers. "We have everything under control--"

Xander burst out with a laugh, incredulous. "Right," he said, "you sure do." He made absolutely no move to, well, move, figuring he'd figure out how he was going to deal with this after the fact.   
The sarcasm wasn't subtle, but his naked amusement at _how radically untrue_ that was was shortlived-- because more important things took over in short order.

"Hypothermia," Draugmon hissed, icicles forming over his shoulders once again-- and this time, Corymon didn't feint out of the way in time, because she was looking down at Xander to see what the hell was going on there. Xander's snide amusement at the claim that the police had this under control (see: _the completely wrecked helicopter and almost certainly injured operators thereof_ ) quickly gave way to--

Corymon was hit squarely by another barrage of icicles from Draugmon. Her flight faltered as she flapped desperately, but it was clear that the icicle had taken a nice chunk out of her side and the membrane of her wing. A few more inches to one side and it would have gone through her abdomen.   
She landed inelegantly, hissing in pain and trying not to look away from her skeletal-faced assailant, who was advancing on her now that she was downed.

"Shit! _Desmon!_ " he yelled, immediately wrenching his attention away.

"Xander!" she blurted as she noticed him running forward, "stay back! See? This is fine, all fuckin' good--" She grit her teeth as she tried to straighten herself up, but even so, Xander was already breaking into a run towards her-- and Draugmon was already summoning up more icicles over his head, wholly unperturbed by the human running into his line of fire as well.

See, Xander didn't exactly have a _plan_ here-- aside from maybe get Desmon to de-digivolve, minimize her, and _make a fucking break for it_. If they couldn't do jack or shit, it wasn't worth being here. In fact, he realized vaguely, their being present might actually make things _worse_ , since Draugmon seemed to see another digimon and go into attack mode, so--

Fuck it, cut your losses and try to make a break, and whatever happens is what happens? Admittedly, it was rapidly becoming clear that _what happens_ was looking more and more like a rain of icicles as big as he was, but _too late now_ ; Xander was not dissuaged, neither by Corymon telling him to stay back nor from the megaphone behind him yelling-- well, basically the same thing.

Of course, things chose that moment to go from bad to worse.

Before he had even half-closed the distance between him and his partner, a familiar sound filled the air. Xander's D-Rive began to screech as blue circuit-like lines began to creep up from the tips of Corymon's feet and spreading like spider webs up the membranes of her wings. Their geometric patterns opened up into more organic lines as they moved across her body.

Draugmon stopped in his tracks, just as he had when this had happened to Doctorimon, so at least there was that.

The rest of Corymon's body began to turn black. Once she was fully consumed by it, which took mere seconds, she snapped her head up, her eyes filled with the same blue light as the circuit-veins trailing up her body.

She began to screech, an unholy noise that came ripping out of her throat. It was the sound of an animal in pain, sounding breathless and panicked, and it began to match the sound of Xander's screeching D-Rive, until suddenly, four words could be discerned in the noise:

 

"Corymon, catalyst evolve to--!"

" _Shit,_ " Xander spat, skidding to a stop.

The black engulfed her and spread out into a sphere that engulfed her. Distortion racked it, interrupting the blue streaks of light that coursed across it, and the screeching noise of both Xander's D-Rive and the unearthly noise coming out of Corymon gradually in pitch until it was ear-splitting. Just at the moment that it was too much to bear, the orb burst, leaving a new form in its wake.

Where Corymon was like a wyvern crossed with a bat, this new form was stil draconic, but in a less familiar way. Her front half was... recognizable, at least, and looked similar enough to Corymon to be familiar-ish.

She'd gotten a bit of a makeover, though.

Her arms still served as her wings, now tipped ended more obviously in big, sharp, burnt-orange claws; they had turned black and had obvious stitching mending together old tears in their membranes, but just above them, a second, smaller pair of black membranous wings burst forth. Large orange spikes grew out of her shoulderblades between her pairs of wings, matching the ones that grew near the base of-- was it her tail, or just the lower half of her body? Below the abdomen, her fur stopped, segueing instead into what looked like a long, serpentine tail covered in light blue scales; a scorpion's stinger remained at the tip of her tail, but it was dripping a viscous orange venom.

Long bandages were lashed around her face, covering her eyes entirely, and a spiked band of leather crossed across the top of them. It looked almost as though she had additional white spikes growing out of her face, but when she wrenched her mouth to let loose with a feral screech, open despite the bandages apparently meant to impede her doing this, it was clear that they were sharp lower teeth, puncturing through the top of her muzzle.

She flapped her four wings as she lifted into the air, lashing her long tail. Her movements were ragged and uneven, like her wings couldn't quite beat in sync.

"Camazmon!" she screeched.

 

" _Shit!_ " Xander said again, louder this time, and he began to backpedal-- not just because Camazmon had an air of wrongness about her, like something wasn't _quite_ supposed to be this way, but because she wasted very little time.

"Kamikaze Dive!"

The claws on her primary wings glowing, Camazmon threw herself at Draugmon; she was maybe twenty feet long to his twenty-five tall, but this slight disparity didn't seem to concern her at all. She smashed into the undead digimon at full force, which was more than enough to stagger him backwards, and the two of them collided as one into a building.

That building's wall did _not_ win that battle, and a cloud of dust and panic rose into the air-- because that building was not uninhabited, if the sounds of panic and frantic evacuation were any indication.

Camazmon seemed completely unperturbed by this; she tore at him with her claws, ripping gashes in his sparse fur and the frozen muscles underneath. Draugmon hissed as he tried to dislodge her, his own claws surrounded in icy energy in efforts force her off; in response, she wrenched her mouth open against the restraint of the bandages around them. She had to open her jaws quite a ways in order to get the sharp fangs that had grown through her face to come free, and yet she did, looking uncanny and almost snake-like in the moment before she sunk her teeth into Dragumon's side.

Xander felt kind of numb, honestly, rooted to the spot as he watched.

Where IlDoctorimon had moved uncannily fluidly with a contradictory jerkiness, Camazmon was... well, she was more consistent, in a way. All of her motions seemed to be barely contained, like a rabid animal, and she thrashed and clawed and dug her teeth and her claws into Draugmon to keep him from throwing her off.   
Draugmon finally succeeded when he, rather inelegantly, grabbed her by the tail and hurled her away, though not without Camazmon taking a sizable chunk out of his side on the way out-- though almost immediately, Draugmon's flesh began to knit itself back together (or maybe freeze itself back together was a better term).

Camazmon only barely tried to rearrange herself in flight, and she only _barely_ avoided crashing into another building. She didn't seem to realize this, and Xander got the distinct feeling it wasn't her intention to prevent more damage, as she came to a stop close to the ground.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey!" Camazmon said, her voice like a hyena's laugh, and-- it was actually words, not just attack names, "that's no _fun_! Kamikaze Dive!" she yelled, surging forward again as she had the last time, rushing up the street near ground level instead of from above; Xander had to quickly backpedal further away to stay out of the way.

"Black Ice," Draugmon hissed, slashing through the air and releasing another wave of ice. Camazmon dodged it by surging upwards; Draugmon's attack instead took chunks out of the street, the buildings, and the overturned cars that had been just past her.

Xander was glad he had moved, because if he hadn't--

Well, dammit all to hell.   
(He'd kind of just been thinking of this-- all of this-- as _inconvenient_. Not _dangerous_ \-- not even after last time, but it was getting harder and harder to just brush this off, and--)

"Desmon! What the _fuck_ are you doing!?" he yelled, doing an admirable job of keeping any emotion that wasn't anger out of his voice; she didn't seem to hear him, and he can't say he expected her to.

She smashed into Draugmon again, but this time, Draugmon was ready; he met her with icy claws, jamming them right into her chest as she drew close, and Camazmon--

Cackled.

Troubling.

Before she had even tumbled to a stop, and the moment she righted herself -- in fact, just before she finished righting herself -- she was bounding back towards Draugmon, digging her claws into the cracking concrete.

"Paralytic Acid!" she yelled, and the orange venom that was secreted from her tail-tip began to drip out of her mouth. She wrenched her mouth open most of the way as the substance began to gather, and as she ran, she fired it right at Draugmon's face.

Draugmon let loose with a rattling noise that was as good as a roar as the venom hit him squarely, and began to smoke. He lifted his claws to his face, hissing as he tried in vain to wipe it away.

"Can't see?" Camazmon taunted in a sing-song voice, snickering. "Guess we're even, now!"

Camazmon was the only one who found this amusing, as the newly temporarily blinded Draugmon began to emit icy fog from his mouth again.   
"Hypothermia," he hissed, and this was a big one-- more and more icicles began to coalesce.

"Kamikaze Dive!" Camazmon yelled, but she was quite interrupted as Draugmon released his attack.

See, Kamazmon was indeed rushing forward, but the rain of icicles went in every direction, crashing into the ground, smashing windows, impaling overturned cars-- and piercing through Camazmon's wings, effectively pinning her to the ground.

Draugmon whipped his head around blindly, still letting loose with that rattling not-quite-breath.

Camazmon continued cackling, as though this was all some great game.

And then---

And then a little white shape shot by. Xander only barely saw it himself, and he snapped his head to follow it, but when he did--   
He saw Draugmon vanish with a little surge of static and glitchiness, and no sign of what had done it. All that was left was Camazmon, pinned to the street by icicles holding her down like pins in a mounted butterfly.

And, of course, the police sirens and helicopters and _fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_.

Xander didn't seem to even realize what he was doing when he ran towards Camazmon.   
" _Desmon you dumbfuck_!" he yelled, but Camazmon didn't seem to register his voice at all. She writhed and continued her manic laughter, trying to wrench herself free, even as her partner ran up to her, totally unconcerned with anything going on around her. She didn't even seem to notice that her writhing was making a mess, her blood smearing on both herself and the street below her.

So Xander did all he could think to do.

He punched her.

He reared back and punched Camazmon. Just straight up decked her right in the snout.

She stopped laughing. She stopped moving entirely.   
Her ears perked up.

And she began to glow.

In a matter of moments, she was Desmon once more, laying half-unconscious in a rough circle of icicles and smeared blood in the middle of the street.

"What the fuck," Xander muttered, looking over his shoulder at the police -- they were _definitely_ approaching -- but more importantly at the battered bat.   
He didn't have the time to reach down and pick her up; he reached for his D-Rive and minimized her in a flash of blue light.

Fuck.

He stood there kind of numbly for a few moments, and in that time, a police officer closed the distance, asking where the monsters had gone; apparently, they hadn't made the connection that he had minimized her. How could anyone expect them to, really?

Xander nodded with grit teeth as the police officer tried to question him, lectured him on evacuating, that he was lucky he wasn't hurt, that this and that and that-- honestly, he kind of tuned it out.   
He glanced at his phone.

Ten new messages-- five were from the group chat, and the rest were from Mike.

God dammit.

 

***

Down the street, a particular young woman looked up the street at the flurry of icicles, at the young man who _so obviously_ was partnered to the bat digimon that she wondered how nobody else noticed it. She tried to commit his face to memory, for all the good it would do her.

Lily frowned.

She had just wanted to go out, but when Draugmon and Camazmon had crashed into the club... well. She hadn't been hurt, but some people definitely had been, and she couldn't help but feel responsible.   
She had just wanted to go out, but she supposed she couldn't have _that_ , could she?

After all, it was clear to her, at least, what Draugmon was looking for:   
Her.


	17. Episode 17: Friends in Low Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the long-awaited(???) guest appearance from the first place winner of the relaunch contest! As well as some other fun stuff. :D Profile updates on the site, too, but give it a read-through first so you know what you're looking for.
> 
> AND AWAYYY WE GO.

The brief reprieve had come to an end. Luckily, nothing quite so drastic as Draugmon had showed up again; no other ultimate level digimon had reared their heads, to the point where the humans only vaguely remembered the term at all. This, at least, was as close to a relief as anyone was going to get.

It had been just a week since Draugmon's last appearance, and in that time, two digimon incidents had happened-- at least, as far as the group was aware of.

The first had been a large sea-serpent type digimon, aptly named Seadramon, that had appeared in the Harper river one evening about eleven PM one night, and been quickly eliminated-- but it had not been the main squad that had taken care of it.   
A couple glitchy, distorted photos were all the evidence there was for the incident at all, but to those who knew what to look for, the two orange shapes of Hokkaimon and Himamon were distinctive enough to make out. (Even _if_ Himamon looked qute bizarre in the few pictures she was in, as her bulky fur was drenched and she looked something like an incredibly large wet cat.)

Even if they weren't a fan of the little side-squad, with all that had happened, nobody was complaining that it had at least been as efficient a dealing-with as it was. Gelermon had remarked that it was clearly only because Ryan and Shitomon hadn't been present, because Shitomon would have stopped to give the Seadramon a moralizing speech, and Sam had found this amusing enough to pass it on to the group.   
(It was totally unfair, though, because _they_ had a digimon that was safely in the middle of the river, _and_ \-- as their digimon pointed out -- Seadramon was only a champion level.)

The other incident, meanwhile, was much lower key-- a giant red beetle, Kuwagamon, had emerged on the very south side of town smack in the middle of the night, and Banshemon had made quick work of it. It cast quite a stark contrast to the entire group's rookie-level struggle against the not-dissimilar Kabuterimon incident mere months ago.

Both of these digimon incidents had been feral ones, as far as they knew, as opposed to ones with any intentions; both were quick and painless and the mark they left, both on the landscape and in the public perception, was minimal.   
This was something to be grateful for; in the intervening days, the coverage, the theorizing, had not stopped. It felt like it was impossible to turn around without a picture of Draugmon or Camazmon in the news, discussion of the damage, even the possibility of Digimon (albeit by the name _UDC_ ) was enough to get heads turning and people talking.

(There had been no fatalities, but the helicopter crew had been temporarily hospitalized.)

It was easy to see _why_ it was dominating the city's imagination, but it didn't mean it was something anyone wanted to deal with.

The fact that the incident had been quick and painless did not, however, change the fact that it had still been in the middle of the night. Peter was grateful for the fact that he worked at a coffee shop, because it was only by the grace of willpower and dangerous amounts of caffeine that he was functional right now.

It was fairly dead today, with only him and one other person on the clock, and as many people actually in the shop proper, so he didn't even have the stimulation of a busy day to keep him going. He hissed a profanity through his teeth and only narrowly avoided burning his hand, pulling it away from the heating element that he was trying to clean-- some idiot had left it on, and by _some idiot_ he knew it had probably been him.

"Don't hurt yourself, there."

Peter was considering whether or not he needed to run his hand under water or if he could just power through it, he didn't immediately realize he was being spoken to-- it wasn't the voice of the other guy working, after all, and since he wasn't manning the register right now--

He blinked and looked over his shoulder to see a just-familiar-enough face to go with a just-familiar-enough voice; Jen was leaning at an awkward position on the counter so she could prop her chin on her hands.

"Can I help you?" he asked in his customer service voice, turning around.

"Oh, no, I'm good, the other guy already took my order."   
Peter glanced to the side, and noticed his coworker was indeed already working on it.

He vaguely hoped that someone else would come in, or maybe that lightning would strike him. Unfortunately, the air pressure was all wrong for a thunderstorm and the café was having a dead day. Of course he wouldn't be so lucky.

"Do you want something?" he said then, speaking at a much more casual tone that can only be described as a _NOT-customer-service_ voice.

"It's you who's got the little ghost, right?" Jen said, straightforward and with the inflection of someone who already knew the answer to the question she was asking. She was still leaning on the counter. Peter said nothing, and she took that as an affirmative. "You took care of the bug problem last night? I know you and your lot have been kind of trying to keep on top of, you know, the problems that emerge."

Peter frowned, but kept his lips shut tight. He hadn't thought anyone had seen them, seeing as it had been so damn late, but--?

"I was gonna take care of it myself, ya know, but then I saw your--" she paused, not wanting to say _digimon_ , "friend's name on the radar, so I figured you had it pretty well in hand. Didn't want to make it more complicated than it had to be, yeah?"

"Can't say that's what I'd expect," Peter said carefully, raising an eyebrow. "Last I checked, you and your friends were still in the business of trying to get rid of ours."   
He felt like he was talking in a really, really stupid code, trying to avoid mentioning digimon by name.   
"Not to give you any ideas, but I'd think that if someone was alone, that would be the time to try and pick them off."

"Yeah, well, you know, there's extenuating circumstances," Jen said, lifting and dropping one shoulder. "I mean, I'm _guessing_ that yours hasn't--" she paused as she tried to think of a way to phrase it, "hit the next stage yet, seeing as I haven't heard any more news stories about any more disasters, but I'd rather not risk it just in case you decided to pull out all the stops, yanno?"

What she was saying underneath all that vaguery and insinuation, to be clear, was _I figure that Banmon hasn't reached ultimate yet because if she had, it'd have been as big a mess as Raumon and Desmon had; but I still wouldn't want to be the only one taking care of it if I came to confront you and she_ did _reach ultimate then and there_.   
Jeeze.

Peter's coworker dropped Jen's drink on the counter, and she stood up straight as she took it in hand.   
"Or at least, that's _Ryan's_ explanation for why he hasn't made any moves, anyway," she said. "Lurumo--" she paused, catching herself, "my friend's got her own reasons, yeah? I kinda follow her logic, and I'm not gonna try arguing it with her."

Peter sighed through his nose. He was currently adjusting a stack of paper cups idly so that he had a reason to continue standing near the counter instead of going back to cleaning.   
"Do you have a point you intend to make, or are you just here to antagonize me?"

"Well, hey, don't be self-centered-- mostly I just wanted coffee," she said, holding up her cup with a smile, "but you know. Little bit of all of the above, yeah?"

Peter sighed through his nose and shook his head. Jen waved over her shoulder as she walked out, and Peter drummed his fingers on the counter before going back to what he had been doing before he had been interrupted, and this time being much more careful not to burn himself.

He faintly realized that he was getting a taste of his own medicine in dealing with someone who dealt solely in vagueness. He didn't realize, though, that he was also getting another one of his other bad habits turned around on him; one of the lone customers lurking in the corner was trying desperately to play it cool as he pricked up his ears.

 

***

"Banshee's Call!" Banshemon cried, and a flurry of white spirits rose out of the ground and shot forward.

They were in a familiar-enough locale-- the often-empty park that had played host to the group's little group picnic-stroke-Kabuterimon fight those short months ago. Peter was fairly certain that if he would have returned to their picnic site, he might have still seen the evidence of their scuffle-- the broken trees, or, hell, considering how few people came out to this park, he wouldn't have been surprised if they had been the last people to use the site at all. Truth be told, he was getting a little bit of deja vu, lately, between fighting giant beetles and now this.

Peter had had his brief conversation with Jen on Wednesday afternoon, and now it was Friday, and at least this time it had the dignity to appear during normal human waking hour, around ten in the morning. This park was actually not far from the university district, so he was the closest person to hand, and was hoping to get it done with time to spare before he had to go in for his shift at noon-- but unfortunately, this digimon seemed to have a bit of a bone to pick.

Dobermon growled as it leapt out of the way of Banshemon's attack. It was a menacing creature, sinewy and so thin that its ribs and spine were visible through its skin and with massive blades in place of dewclaws. Its red eyes glinted as the wind shifted the leaves above them-- both the normal eyes, on its face (where eyes are supposed to be) and the red eyes inset into its shoulders and haunches.

When it spoke, its voice was haughty and superior. "This is nothing, compared to what I had to overcome to get here. I'm not about to leave empty-handed. Schwarz Strahl!"   
It opened its mouth and fired a continuous jet-black beam; Banshemon lifted her arms to protect the bulk of her body, and even as the black beam singed her, she grimaced through it, and her claws began to glow bright white and grow in length.

"Spirit Ripper!" she cried, rushing forward. She practically seemed to cut through Dobermon's beam as she threw herself at the dog digimon. Her claws passed right through it, but it snarled with pain as it recoiled, practically thrown backwards into the small thicket of trees behind it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter faintly thought he saw something move, but he didn't turn to look; Dobermon wasted no time righting itself and snarled, baring its teeth as it leapt at Banshemon.

It forewent a proper attack, leaping at her and sinking its teeth into the fabric of her arm. Even without a hard physical body underneath it to grasp onto, its teeth ripped through the fabric to hold her. She would have simply attempted to become incorporeal just long enough to slip free, but it didn't seem to be possible; Dobermon was beginning to gather up another Schwartz Strahl to fire at point-blank into Banshemon's arm, and the energy of its attack prevented her from escaping so easily.

"Spirit Ripper!" Banshemon yelled again, slashing down through Dobermon with her free hand, and it snarled, releasing her as it made a noise of pain.

She almost looked a little bit sorry as she pulled away. It was hard to tell if her sleeve was smoking, as it was singed black by Dobermon's stalled attack, or if it was her smoky body trailing out of the holes that its teeth had torn in the fabric; either way, it was hard to remain too sorry for too long.

Dobermon reared down and lunged forward, hardly giving Banshemon the room to breathe or realign herself, and she was almost taken by surprise to end up in the exact same situation as she had just gotten out of--

"Acid Claw!"

A tan and purple blur hurtled out of the trees, a purple glow trailing behind. Judging by the voice, it was a girl; she crashed into Dobermon at high enough speed to knock the dog off its course, though she was quite a bit smaller than either champion-level digimon, and this made it a bit hard to follow what was going on.   
In a flurry of flying paws, the little digimon (no prizes for guessing that it _was_ a digimon) scratched and clawed at Dobermon's side, and as her claws connected, a faint sound filled the air, almost like a weak sizzle.

Dobermon snarled as it righted itself, teeth bared; the little digimon leapt away to put some space between herself and the dog. Dobermon, Banshemon, and Peter alike all got a look at this newcomer as her paws touched down on the ground.

She was a little lion-like creature more than three feet tall and most of her body was covered in tan fur. Green-spiked bracelets matched her collar, and tufts of dark-purple fur sat around both her wrists and a fluffy ruff around her neck. It was hard to say whether her swoopy mass of mane-like hair or her segmented scorpion-like tail were more distinctive, but both were the same dark-purple colour, and her eyes were bright, shiny, and emerald green.   
(Maybe _manticore_ was more apt than lion.)

She wore a mischievous smirk on her face, appropriately cat-like, as she settled into a battle-ready stance.

Dobermon glanced sidelong at Banshemon, and growled. "Of course you would bring in backup."

Banshemon didn't have the chance to retort -- that she had no idea who this little digimon was -- before Dobermon opened its mouth again.

"Schwarz Strahl!"

This time, the jet-black beam was aimed at the new little digimon, and-- well.   
Banshemon had to make a snap decision, and so she did.

"Spirit Ripper!"

Right at the moment that Dobermon fired its beam, the new little digimon retaliated.

"Venom Strike!"

She gathered up a ball of an ephemeral substance that could only be described as _looking poisonous_. She tossed it into the air before leaping up after it and spiking it with a (frankly rather unnecessarily dramatic) swipe of her tail, like a volleyball, right at Dobermon's face, as the black beam hit the ground she had been standing on a moment before.

Banshemon's bright-white claws connected with Dobermon, phasing through the dog's side at the same time that the corrosive sphere smashed into its face.   
It was really more because of Banshemon than the newcomer, but either way, Dobermon snarled, baring its teeth right before it exploded into motes of light that gathered into Peter's D-Rive in a concentrated beam.

"Acid Claw!"

The little manticore called her attack, lunging at Banshemon without so much as a moment of hesitation, but Banshemon had kind of been expecting this; before the attack had the chance to connect, she made herself incorporeal for a split second, and the newcomer sailed right through her and wound up face-down in the dirt.

Banshemon cast a glance over her shoulder to where Peter stood, her expression one of clear bewilderment, even if the only expression she could make was with her eyes. She didn't want to attack what was clearly a rookie-level, but--?

Peter gripped his D-Rive tightly in his hand, and he opened his mouth to say something, but the sound that filled the air was pointedly not Peter's voice.

"Martyamon, get back h--!"

A young man stumbled out of the trees from whence the little manticore had come. His voice died in his throat and he continued to stumble right to a stop as he realized that he had an audience.

He looked to be around the same age as _every other goddamn person they had met who had anything to do with digimon_ \-- that is to say, college age; he had glasses and blond hair, a plain green button-down over a plain white t-shirt and eyes that matched the button-down. He looked a little bit harried and confused, like someone who ran onstage, hoping to pass unnoticed, and didn't expect to see a full house staring at him.   
Admittedly, it was only Peter and Banshemon looking at him, both blinking slowly, but still.

There was an awkward silence wherein the little manticore spat out a clump of dirt but nobody else spoke. All it needed was a cricket chirp; instead what they got was the distant sound of cars, which would have to do.

"This one with you?" Peter tried as a blunt icebreaker, pointing at the rookie-level digimon, whose claws were beginning to glow purple again as she got to her feet.

The stranger didn't immediately answer Peter; he saw a more pertinent issue to take care of. "If you throw one more punch," the young man said, looking at the little digimon, "you're making your own ramen tonight."

"What?" The purple glow immediately faded from the manticore's paws, and she looked over her shoulder, a horribly offended look on her face. "You don't let me use the stove, that's not fair!"

"That's the point," the young man said, and the manticore put her hands on her hips and huffed, but she made no move to attack again.

Banshemon and Peter exchanged slightly bewildered expressions.   
With the threat apparently defused, Banshemon drifted over to Peter. Rather, she drifted slightly behind him, as though she could hide behind him despite being significantly larger than her partner.

"I'm going to take that as a yes to my question," Peter said, stroking his chin in consideration. He couldn't quite place it, but he seemed vaguely familiar, though not enough for Peter to place.

The strange young man heaved a sigh, scratching the back of his head in exasperation. "Yeah, Martyamon's with me. I'm-- sorry about her."

"And I'm sorry about _you_ being such a killjoy," Martyamon snapped back, hands on her hips and a smirk on her lips.

He didn't dignify that with a direct response. "She's Martyamon, and I'm Theo," he said instead, and he stepped closer to Peter so he could offer a hand to shake, when Peter did. "I have to admit I didn't exactly expect to run into anyone else when Martyamon took off running, but she had insisted, and I don't think I could have stopped her if I tried."

"Well, I didn't expect there to be two champions," Martyamon retorted, walking up as well "and _I_ just wanted a little bit of entertainment. Side note, I totally could have taken it if it had just been one or the other."

"Sorry we got to it first, then," Peter said, voice even, and he put on a polite smile. "We didn't mean to ruin your fun." Banshemon glanced sidelong at him, a little bit confused, but didn't say anything.

"We don't mean to give you any trouble," Theo said, and he shot a look at Martyamon that very clearly said _and don't you say we do_. "We'll just be leaving." He began to usher Martyamon, attempting to lead her from whence they had come.

"How long have you known Martyamon for?" Peter said instead, stopping Theo in his tracks.

"What?"

Peter shrugged one shoulder. "Just curious," he explained.

Theo looked between the little manticore and Peter, and he heaved a heavy sigh. "A couple weeks? Just since the start of the month, I think."

"Oh, how time flies when you're having fun," Martyamon said unsolicted, inspecting her claws like she was inspecting her manicure.

Peter hummed quietly at this, though, and he and Banshemon exchanged looks. This was the first time they had heard of someone with a digimon that had come along this recently-- though now that he thought about it...   
He couldn't just outright ask if Theo had a D-Rive, but he could definitely wonder.

"I'm not going to lie," Theo said after a moment, heaving a sigh. "I already... well, I can't say knew, but I had a feeling."

"Oh?" Peter said, training his voice into mild curiosity as opposed to anything that might imply _oh shit_ , because, really, he was a bit of a worst-case-scenario thinker.

"I overheard you having a conversation at the Lotus the other day," he said, and Peter immediately realized why he thought Theo's face was familiar. (Give him a break, he couldn't be expected to remember the face of every patron of his workplace.) "I didn't really think anything about it until I heard the girl say something about-- Rurumon?"

"Lurumon," Banshemon provided quietly.

"Yes," Theo said, nodding and folding his arms. "I got curious. I started looking back over the video clips and pictures from the fights over the summer, and I noticed something that looked like her." He nodded his head in Banshemon's direction. "And I saw a guy who kind of looked like you near her."

"To be fair," Peter said, raising one eyebrow, " _you'd_ kind of look like me in bad, shaky pictures. That doesn't say much."

Martyamon snorted a laugh; Theo smiled slightly. "Well, right, but still. I heard her say something about a ghost, and..." He gestured vaguely. "For what it's worth, I wasn't exactly planning to hunt you down and try to talk to you about it or anything," he said, realizing only a bit belatedly that he should probably clarify that. "I just started looking into it more and one thing led to another."

"Joy. We're famous," Peter said dully to Banshemon, who squeaked a little bit, clearly dismayed.

"It seems to me like you've been trying to keep digimon from wrecking things," Theo said. "... admittedly, I only started noticing it when I started going back over the videos again and actively looking that I noticed the same ones were showing up. The ghost and the bat and the-- weird angel dragon thing? Among others."   
Ah. Right.

Of course-- and Peter knew this -- the media hadn't been differentiating between one-off digimon emergences and the ones who were taking care of the incidents, and most people were understandably distracted by the destruction that the issue of _is this giant wolf the same giant wolf as last time, or does it just look the same_ wasn't high on the priority list.   
And the others -- Shitomon, Hulimon, and Lurumon -- also got the same unfavorable treatment, even if destruction seemed to follow them a little less intently.

So Peter answered noncomittally.

"Mm," he said ("said"), and his lack of comment didn't go unnoticed; Theo kept talking to fill the space.

"Though now that I have you, I did want to ask-- how have you been hiding them?" he said, frowning. "I've been trying to figure out how to deal with Martyamon--"

"'Deal with'," Martyamon said, making air quotes with her paws and scoffing.

"We're already probably not going to get our deposit back on the apartment, after all," Theo said, undisturbed by her commentary. "But I'd imagine a bigger digimon like that is even harder to hide." He gestured at Banshemon.

Banshemon looked nervously at Peter; he nodded once and she, apprehensively, nodded back. She began to glow bright white and her larger form melted away, leaving Banmon in her wake. As the light faded, she had lifted her cloth-like arms up to her face to cover it, and she lowered them sheepishly as she peered back over at Theo and Martyamon.

Both young man and little manticore had taken a half-step back, apparently not wanting to be too close to the glowing monster, which was understandable enough.

"How'd you do that?" Martyamon demanded, pointing an accusatory finger at Banmon.

"I-- do what?" Banmon said, blinking.

"De-digivolve. You're not supposed to be able to do that!" she said, then looked at Theo, still pointing at Banmon. "She's not supposed to be able to do that!"

"You mean shrink?" Theo said, frowning as he tried to determine what happened, but Martyamon was already leaping at the chance to explain.

"De-digivolve! If she de-digivolved it means she lost a bunch of energy all of a sudden and usually when that happens it means they got their ass beat and they're probably dying, but she seems fine as far as I can tell?" She had moved from pointing to gesturing emphatically.

"I only really digivolve for a short time," Banmon said, piping up meekly. "Usually just to fight--"

" _I want to do that_ ," Martyamon said immediately, and it was hard to tell if she meant _temporarily digivolve_ or _fight_ ; both seemed like realistic options. "Tell me how." She paused, then crossed over to Peter, looking up at him-- and the D-Rive he held in his hand. "When I got the killing blow on Dobermon," you go on believing that, Martyamon, "I saw its data get absorbed into that thing. Give it to me."

Peter immediately blanched, but Theo was already reprimanding her before he even had the chance to say 'no'. "Martyamon, you can't just demand people give you their things."

"It works pretty well on you," she said matter-of-factly, looking over her shoulder at him.

 

"I'd rather not," Peter said, cutting off an impending back-and-forth. He knew perfectly well what had happened the last time an unrelated digimon had gotten their claws on a D-Rive, and he'd prefer to avoid that.

"That's it, though, isn't it?" Martyamon said, putting her hands on her hips. "It's not normal to be able to digivolve at will. That's the first thing I've seen in this world that seems to interact with digimon, but I've never seen one in the Digital World, so that must be it." For as obnoxious as she clearly was, she was pretty perceptive, even if she was making some pretty big leaps of logic to get there.

"As far as we know, yes," Banmon said, tilting her head.

"As far as you know?" Theo prompted.

"It's a very, very long story," Peter said, shaking his head, "not all of which I'm comfortable divulging, but, yes, it's what seems to allow the digimon to evolve temporarily."

"I'm going to take a guess that the other digimon I keep seeing are the same way?" Theo supposed, but Martyamon was much less interested in the details.

"This is lame," Martyamon said, sighing dramatically as she turned around, walking back to Theo's side. "Well, if it's not going to do anything for me, I don't care. If she can digivolve anytime she wants it wouldn't even be fun to try and fight her. Let's go."   
(Hadn't she just said she could totally have taken a champion by herself? Maybe best not to point that out.)

Martyamon was already preparing to go back from whence they had come, and Theo looked between her and the Peter-Banmon duo kind of helplessly. "I guess we're going, then," he said; now that he had started a conversation, and had at least started to get some answers, he didn't seem to want to leave, despite how quick he had been to try and usher Martyamon away before.

He barely had time to make a proper goodbye before he went after Martyamon, and his question went unanswered.

"Are we just going to let them go?" Banmon said, tilting her head as she drifted up beside Peter.

Peter spoke slowly, folding his arms and choosing his words with care. "If it's taken this long for us to know she exists, and she hasn't caused a panic, I don't think we need to worry yet."

 

***

"You know, we had a chance to learn a lot that you just threw away," Theo said as he caught up to Martyamon and once they were well out of earshot of Peter and Banmon.

"Why's it matter?" Martyamon, spreading her paws out palms-up as she shrugged. "It's not gonna affect _us_ any."

"I'd say that the affairs of digimon matter to someone -- that is, me -- who is dealing with digimon," Theo objected, putting his hands in his pockets.

"My affairs mostly consist of food," Martyamon said with a smirk. "I'll beat up any digimon or, heck, any human who tries to give you any grief, and _you'll_ pay me back for my generous service with snacks, and it'll be a fantastic mutually beneficial relationship. We can let the _special brigade_ deal with their own problems."

"Don't you think it might have something to do with what's happening to your world?" Theo said. "You said yourself that there were a bunch of digimon that crossed over years ago, and it would make sense if--"

"Hey, I came here to get away from all of that," Martyamon cut him off. "It's not going to affect me any more than it already has."

Theo sighed. "I have no idea how you can be happier not knowing."

"See, _I_ already know plenty, it's you that's got the problem."

 

***

_ngl that sounds fishy as fuck,_ Sam said in the group chat almost immediately after Peter summarized this meeting of the manticore and her beleaguered human buddy. _youre sure they werent trying anything?_

_I'm choosing to take them at their word,_ Peter replied, and even over text the shrug was implied. _It's all I have to go on, but Martyamon didn't seem particularly interested in things that weren't eating or fighting for its own sake. I don't think she's secretly in league with Shitomon._

_oh actually ! remember? oremon said the last time he dealt with ratamon,_ Meghan said, _he -- ratamon i mean -- asked if he knew of any other people with digimon. do you think that's what he might have been talking about??_

Natalie started and stopped typing a couple times; she, like everyone else, had kind of forgotten that little blip of a question in all of the chaos that had happened since then. Eventually, she sent, _hmm. he said martyamon had only been around since the start of the month, and-- when did you fight drimogemon again, Meg?_

_it was on the 18th last month,_ came the immediate reply from Sam; he apparently had been looking into this already, and he had brought up the coverage of it to check the dates. _so unless this guy is really, really bad at remembering the date, no._

_damn,_ Natalie lamented. _i thought we might have been onto something._

_I wonder why Ratamon would have cared about that at all,_ Peter said, after a moment of thought.

_no idea,_ Sam said. _shitomon herself said that there were only five digimon who were harboring the corruption shit when she infodumped all over our heads like so much sanctimonious sewage spewing out of a busted pipe._ Right-- he had been present, and written down notes, for the entire conversation with Shitomon.

_lovely imagery,_ Natalie said.

_you're welcome._ Sam's sarcasm was overwhelming even without any other context.

_am i the only one who's considered that maybe, just maybe, the rabbit is just shit at math?_ Xander cut in.

_that seems too simply, though, doesn't it? < :T_ Meghan said.

_Whatever Ratamon meant isn't the point,_ Peter said. _What_ is _the point is that there's a digimon who's come through recently and made friends with a human._

_without a d-rive,_ Natalie added, _which i feel is an important detail._

_Right,_ Peter confirmed. _It doesn't narrow down much, but it nixes the idea that they're just something inherent to making buddy-buddy with a digimon._   
See, Peter had initially considered that it just had something to do with the corruption that kept coming up, but that wouldn't explain how the other three digimon and their humans had them, too. He and Sam had batted around the idea that it was just some nebulous _thing_ that happened, triggered by some unknown event and that got sent out to any human who had bonded with a digimon after that point.

Yes, it was weird and nebulous, but a lot of these things were weird and nebulous, and Sam was better (for a given value of better) at figuring out how the D-Rives worked; the theorizing and the _why_ was very much Peter's wheelhouse, and he didn't have much to go off.

Natalie shared her thoughts. _if martyamon's been around since the start of the month and we're only just now finding out about her then i mean i guess that's a positive? at least, it's not a negative._

_That was my thought,_ Peter said in agreement, _and why I didn't try to apprehend her or anything like that._

_moreover,_ Natalie continued, _i don't know how great i'd feel about attacking a digimon that, a, apparently is relatively peaceful, and b, made friends with a human._

_yeah. s'not our problem unless they make it our problem,_ Xander agreed.

_i feel like all that kinda brings up the question of why they're coming here, though..._ Meghan said, kind of just sharing the thought as it came to her. _i mean the feral ones were just lost, and the ones who want to ruin our day obviously have a goal, but i wonder why she would have come through only to get buddy-buddy with a human?_

There was a pause where nobody typed anything.

Natalie's next question was one that all of them could relate to.

_why do i feel like the more we find out, the less sense any of this makes?_

That lingered on Peter's mind as he set his phone down to start getting ready for work. It seemed like the questions kept piling up without any resolution, and the deeper they dug the more they realized how little they had actually uncovered.

Banmon had been quiet -- well, she was always quiet, but she had been even more quiet than usual, caught up in thought.

"If you don't want to come with me to work, you don't have to," Peter said, glancing at his D-Rive. He always gave her the option.

"I'll come," she said anyway, though she seemed a little distant, a little distracted, and Peter frowned. Something was clearly bothering her, but he wasn't about to try to needle her about it.

 

***

It wouldn't be necessary to describe how Peter's shift went; it was long, and it was busy, and he had enough to think about the entire time that a couple times, he even managed to _not_ think about digimon for a whole ten consecutive minutes.

That luxury did not extend to his situation after he got off work.

He had only barely begun the walk back to his flat when he heard a voice behind him.

"Hey! Scarfy!"

Peter closed his eyes and sighed through his nose-- it was Jen. He opened his eyes as he stopped and turned around to see, indeed, Jen jogging towards him. They were only a few blocks down from the Lotus, and he had been about to take the first turn.   
He had been _so close_.

"It's Peter," he said, reminding her of his name as she drew close enough for him not to have to yell to be heard.

"Yeah, not gonna remember that, sorry," Jen said frankly, not waiting for his response before she went on. "Glad I caught you. Just happened right before you left and I was hopin'-- well, first things first."   
Peter was just about to ask out loud what her point was and why she needed his attention enough to chase him out of his workplace when she pulled her D-Rive out of her bag, and it was very pointedly lit up.

"Motherfucker," he said, completely deadpan, instead. He pulled his own out, and indeed, it was shining bright, and a couple button presses later--

_SkullSatamon. Ultimate level._

" _Motherfucker_ ," he said again, softly but with feeling.   
(He couldn't help but notice another little dart marked _Martyamon_ that was close at hand as well, but he chose not to comment on that one.)

A flash of white light accompanied Banmon's appearing behind him, peering over his shoulder at the device she had just been contained in.   
"Oh no," she said softly, her eyes dropping.

Not wanting to be left out of the party, Lurumon appeared in a burst of golden light, standing next to Jen. Banmon instinctively shrunk a little bit back behind Peter, but the little red panda shook her head.

"I'm not going to try and attack you," she said, and she even managed a little bit of a smile, though it was a bittersweet one. "Asking for your help is hardly something I'd _like_ doing, but there are things we all have to prioritize over our own feelings." She looked over her shoulder; the sun was just barely beginning to set, and they could just barely see a shape far too large to be a bird.   
_For instance,_ it seemed to say without Lurumon having to say as such.

Banmon looked at her with a curious expression, but she nodded after a moment, drifting out just slightly more from behind her partner, however apprehensively.

"I don't want to make Lurumon deal with this alone," Jen explained, looking to Peter, "and Ryan lives way the hell on the other side of town, so by the time he got here shit might go real pear-shaped, ya know? If it's two of us we may be to at least stall it if it starts going badly, yeah?"

"If we stall it long enough for your backup to arrive, then who's to say it wouldn't immediately turn around into a gangup on Banshemon?" Peter said immediately, ever the worst-case-scenario thinker; Banmon squeaked in fear.

Jen shrugged. "You can feel free to call for _your_ friends, if you want, yanno, I just don't know how well it'd go."

Peter sighed; he thought of Xander's explanation of what had happened with Draugmon, how their attempts to _at least stall_ had gone wrong, but.. this was different, right? Right.   
He looked to Banmon for confirmation; she looked conflicted, but she slowly nodded. Peter and Jen exchanged glances, nodded tersely, and took off at a run-- not least of all because it was flying towards a residential area.

 

***

As they drew closer, it was clear that SkullSatamon really lived up to its name, even what they could see from the ground-- a tall and lanky red-boned skeleton with tattered black wings and a massive black core encircled by its ribs and sternum. Leather and metal adorned its body, and a black shroud from which bat wings sprouted enased the top of its, well, skull. A long and tattered tabard trailed far past its feet, suspended by a series of belts around its waist. All of this, and it was wielding a crooked staff atop which a yellow jewel was clutched by a red claw, it looked every bit like something named for both skulls and _motherfucking Satan_ could be expected to look.

"Maybe it isn't hostile," Banmon muttered, not really daring to put her hopes on it.

Its voice rang out from above, and they saw the gem at the tip of its staff begin to glow-- but it wasn't aiming at them. It was aiming at-- really, quite conveniently, an empty plot of land where houses had not yet been built up.   
"Bone Blaster!"

The energy from its staff shot down, smashing through the 'lot for sale' sign and into the tall, unkempt grass. A blast of dirt kicked up around the impact point, and something moved within it.

"Venom Strike!" a voice yelled out in turn, and a woefully-inadequate blob of purple poison sailed into the air, only to dissipate harmlessly before it even reached the halfway point.

" _Dammit,_ " Peter hissed. Banmon, trailing behind Peter, burst forward and began to glow white.

"Banmon, drive evolve to... Banshemon! Banshee's Call!"   
The now-evolved ghost flung herself towards SkullSatamon flying above, and from all around her, white ghosts coalesced out of the air. They sped up and shot past her, and threw themselves at SkullSatamon.

At least it got its attention, and Banshemon realized she didn't have a plan past this point.

"Lurumon, drive evolve to... Himamon!"

Before the golden light had faded away, Himamon was already bounding forward into the lot, presumably to get between SkullSatamon and what, to her, was an unknown-but-presumably-innocent digimon.

Peter looked around frantically, trying to find Theo-- and it took a moment before he saw Martyamon's friend run out from the far end of the plot, apparently in pursuit of Martyamon yet again.   
"Martyamon, get back here!"

Theo stumbled to an inelegant stop for not the first time today as he noticed the other people -- and more importantly, other digimon -- who were present.   
"Crap," he muttered, gritting his teeth and looking between Jen and Peter, Himamon, and Banshemon and SkullSatamon in the air.

"Spirit Ripper!" Banshemon cried, slashing her claws across SkullSatamon-- or at least, trying to. Her glowing claws, which usually passed without issue through digimon, bounced off, as though SkullSatamon were impervious to her attack.

"Skull Hammer!" SkullSatamon cackled-- and there really was no other way to describe it but a cackle -- and it swung its staff like a club, smashing into Banshemon and knocking the ghost back down to the ground.

"Aura Stream!" Himamon yelled, rearing back and firing a crackling beam of golden energy directly at the core in SkullSatamon's chest. This had about as much effect as Banshemon's attack, which is to say none.

SkullSatamon looked down to the ground and snickered, and it stopped beating its wings; it dropped to the ground like a rock, and the dirt and grass practically exploded into the air around it as its metal-booted feet left a small crater in the ground.   
"Lucky me," it said in a laugh, "I'm only here for a few minutes and the other digimon are already lining up. They weren't kidding when they said it would be easier here."

Banshemon righted herself and lifted her claws in a battle-ready stance; Himamon did the same, even though neither of them knew how much good they were going to do. Both champion-levels rushed forward, and it quickly devolved into their claws clashing against SkullSatamon's body, as good as trying to punch solid steel for as much good as they were doing.

With SkullSatamon distracted, Theo was able to run over to the other humans.   
"Hi again," he said, frowning.

"Friend of yours?" Jen asked Peter, putting her hands on her hips.

"Not quite, but," Peter said, shaking his head, "for all intents and purposes we'll say yes."

"Martyamon ran off again, and I couldn't stop her," Theo said, adjusting his glasses. "I didn't expect the digimon to be-- well."

"Who's Martyamon, exactly?" Jen asked, tilting her head; she hadn't actually seen the litte manticore, but that was quick to be remedied.

"You guys suck at this!" Martyamon snapped, leaping forward with her paws glowing purple. She practically ran up Himamon's tail and used the red panda as a springboard, her paws glowing purple. "Acid Claw!"

"Martyamon, stop!" Theo said, reaching out a hand as though he could stop her when her attack was already underway.

If the champions' attacks had had no effect, Martyamon's had no chance; she may as well have tried to knock SkullSatamon over with a stiff breeze. This seemed to amuse the skeletal digimon, and even as Martyamon backed away, it followed her with its eyes, and the gem on its staff began to glow.

"Get back!" Himamon commanded, gathering up golden energy in her mouth, but SkullSatamon was quicker.

"Bone Blaster!" it yelled, but it wasn't aiming for Martyamon-- it was aiming for her human friend.

"Theo!"   
Martyamon quite literally leapt into the line of fire without a moment of hesitation, the beam of energy striking her squarely. It hit her with such a force that the trajectory of her jump was shifted, and she was practically thrown backwards into Theo. He caught her, a bit inelegantly, but concern and near-panic was plain on his face.

"Wh--!?" he said, words failing him.

"She's fine," Himamon said quickly, "as fine as she can be-- if she's not--"

"Skull Hammer!"

Himamon had only been trying to explain that if Martyamon wasn't shifting into pixels of light, she wasn't dying, but her attempt to break to explain this gave SkullSatamon an opening in which to strike her solidly with its staff.

"Himamon!" Jen blurted, and she had to physically stop herself from running forward.

"Fuck," Peter hissed, not sure what to do-- but if he was confused and feeling helpless, it was nothing compared to what Banshemon was.

Banshemon only barely dared glance towards Martyamon and Theo, Jen and Himamon, and really, a thought struck her.

The fact of the matter was, since meeting and talking Martyamon earlier today, it had been bothering her. If Martyamon had been a champion level -- heck, if Martyamon had been just a little more aggressive -- would they have thought twice about trying to eliminate her?   
Yeah, it was true that the digimon they had fought either had it out for them and wouldn't be deterred by anything _other_ than total defeat, but all those feral digimon-- had their crime really been just _being too large_?

(How many digimon who had just wanted to escape a possibly-dying world had they not even spared a second thought on?)

(Would it even have mattered if they had?)

(Did she even have a choice?)

A pang of guilt and fear and panic hit her, and in that moment, she knew she had felt this way before.

And then she felt a whole lot worse, and Peter's D-Rive began to make that horrible, unbearably loud noise.

Banshemon's claws began to glow bright white, as though she were about to attack, but it continued to creep up her arms and a similar glow began to ebb up from her long smoky tail. Just like those who had gone before her, it started geometric and splintered off, and from the blank space in between the lines a blackness consumed her.

She didn't screech; the noise she made was like a prolonged sob, an entirely too-human cry entirely compared to the amost animalistic sounds that Doctorimon and Corymon had made.

 

"Banshemon, catalyst evolve to--!"

The blackness swirled around her, glitching and shifting, as Banshemon's cry began to distort into a glitchy squeal. It built to a breaking point, and then it did, indeed, break, shearing in two and revealing a new form forming out of the darkness.

Long white hair flowed like water down from a more-humanoid head. She wore no hood, and her face was stark white, apparently done up in makeup; her neck and every other bit of her body below seemed to be made of the same bound-together smoke as Banshemon had been.   
Her face was devoid of proper features. Old, blood-stained bandages were wrapped around one eye, and where should have been her other eye was instead a smear of blue facepaint. Instead of a mouth, a jagged, stitched-together scar ran diagonally across her face from underneath the bandages to her opposite jaw.

She wore white and gold robes, tattered and torn, with a greyish-purple sash wrapped around her waist, and-- well. A moment of thought would pin this new form as a naga; emerging from under the tattered bottom of her robe, her body looked more snake-like from the waist down than it had before. complete with a set of white scales on her belly, running down the length of her body and tail, which was tipped in a bone-white rattlesnake rattle. Bandages and bones decorated her long tail, haphazardly placed.

The final detail of note; from the ends of her sleeves were clearly hands, the same black smoke as the rest of her, with too-long fingers and sharp claws. Her arms hung limp at her sides, and her upper body was awkwardly slumped backwards at an angle that couldn't be comfortable for her spine.

She settled on the ground, apparently not able to float freely anymore, and didn't make a single sound as she did.

"Onryomon."

 

It wasn't a cry; it was a simple statement quiet and cold, and easy to miss.

Peter swore under his breath, rooted to the spot.   
(He had... kind of been hoping that the fact that Draugmon had been present for IlDoctorimon and Camazmon had been part of this, but hey, throw that one on the _debunked theories_ pile!)

"Shit," Jen muttered, gritting her teeth. "I was afraid of this."

"And I wasn't?" Peter couldn't help himself from snapping; he took steps backwards to get space between him and the newly-formed Onryomon as she silently moved towards SkullSatamon, her snakelike lower half slithering and shifting on the ground without a sound, not even the rustle of grass.

" _That's_ your digimon?" Theo asked, looking incredulously at Peter; Peter himself said nothing, lips pressed thin.

Himamon, still picking herself up from from SkullSatamon's blow, growled, her fur standing up on end, but she stepped backwards, not wanting to be too close to whatever was about to happen.

"Bone Blaster!" SkullSatamon said, a sort of half-frantic look in its eye (though, really, that had been there from the start) as it fired another beam from its staff at Onryomon. The beam struck her, knocking her back several meters as though she was feather-light; she righted herself without comment.

"Kiss of Death," Onryomon said, barely above a whisper, and like a cobra striking, she had struck in close to SkullSatamon, faster than the eye could follow. She lifted her arms and grasped around SkullSatamon's neck, drawing her face ("face") in close to SkullSatamon's.

SkullSatamon opened its mouth, but no sound escaped; instead, a smoky white essence trailed out, which Onryomon seemed to be absorbing.   
With a blind swing of its club, SkullSatamon dislodged her, and it coughed a rattly cough, looking significantly more worn out than it had a second ago.

"Bone Bl--!" SkullSatamon began, but Onryomon didn't wait.

"Ivory Viper," she said simply (the only sound she made, it was becoming clear, were her very quiet attack announcements); the rattle at the end of her tail began to glow white, and it quickly extended into a blade-like shape. She drew in close to SkullSatamon yet again, and this time, instead of going for its throat with her hands, she struck out for its core with the tip of her tail. The white blade sunk into the black core in SkullSatamon's chest, and the skeleton digimon began to shift and glow into motes of pixellated light almost instantly. The light, as ever, split into beams that shot into both Jen and Peter's D-Rives.

For a half a second, it was entirely too quiet.

"Chakra Strike!"

Himamon launched herself at Onryomon, her claws crackling with golden energy as she struck right at Onryomon's face.

"Why the fuck does this keep happening," Peter hissed as Himamon began to clash with Onryomon-- clearly not trying to beat her, just trying to distract her, as judging by the fact that Himamon immediately drew Onryomon to face away from the human onlookers.

"It's the corruption, dude," Jen said, putting her hands on her hips-- but despite her glib tone and apparent _duh_ answer, she looked sympathetic.

"'Corruption'," Theo said, looking at Martyamon in his arms-- her teeth were gritted but she seemed to be as close to okay as she was going to be, and she was _conscious_ , if her occasional _shit that hurts_ -s were any indication, she just had her eyes closed. "Is that what you were talking about?"

She cracked an eye open to look up at Theo.   
"Can't even let me be wounded in peace, can you?" she managed, smirking, and Theo groaned, half with frustration and half with relief that she could still snark at him.

"What was she talking about?" Peter said, looking at Theo, and Theo frowned.

"When I met her," he said, slowly, "she told me that the world she's from is being torn apart. That's why she came here-- because something happened and it was getting much worse, much faster than it had been for years. She said..." He paused, trying to find words. "She said it was pointless to try and bail it out now, so the best option is to bail out entirely?"

"Butchering my words," Martyamon mumbled indignantly.

"Great," Peter said, grimacing-- but he didn't have time to self-pity, because in front of him, his partner was making things worse.

"Kiss of Death," Onryomon said, drawing in close to Himamon and lifting her long-fingered black hands to the red panda's throat.

"Himamon!" Jen cried out, reaching a hand out, and at that moment, her D-Rive began to glow-- and so did Himamon. Onryomon dropped her hands away immediately, backing away as a golden light began to spread up from Himamon's claws.   
While the bright white light and swirling darkness that had engulfed Banshemon to turn her into this new form had been cold and harsh, the white light that filled the blank space between the golden circuits covering Himamon in almost the same manner seemed warm and comfortable.

Or maybe that was just the knowledge that she wasn't going to turn into a monster influencing opinion.

 

"Himamon, conduction evolve to...!"

She was surrounded by a sphere of light, white and gold, and it burst apart into motes of light to leave behind a new digimon.

While she was slimmer and more compact -- and more anthropomorphic -- than Himamon, she wasn't that much shorter. She still had all the features of a red panda, but her tail was more porportional to her body-- and in exchange, her arms had grown even larger, her massive dark-brown claws practically touching the ground when her arms hung at her side. A couple of leather straps encircled each hand, with inches-long golden spikes sticking out of the ones wrapped around her knuckles.

A long golden scarf sat around her neck, concealing some of the orange-red vest that she wore. Around her waist hung a length of orange fabric, encircling around the back and fastened in place with a small array of gold rings inset with reddish gems that matched the kneepad-like armor that appeared on her legs. Black pants blended almost seamlessly into toeless black boots, adorned with black straps.

She wore a calm expression as she set her feet gently down on the dirt, and her voice was firm and confident.

"Shaolimon!"

 

Onryomon, even though she didn't have eyes, seemed to regard Shaolimon with contempt-- she flicked her tail, and indeed, it made a rattlesnake's telltale noise of irritation.

"Ivory Viper," Onryomon said, and a shining blade began to form around her tailtip once more.

"Eighteen Paw Strike!" Shaolimon cried, lunging forward before Onryomon could, and she began to strike out rapidly, delivering hard and fast strikes with her hands and feet alike. In the split second before each strike hit, a flash of yellow light surrounded the paw about to connect, and she finished it off with a full-body turn, smashing her tail into Onryomon's side.

Onryomon was knocked aside and crumpled inelegantly; Shaolimon fell into a defensive stance, her expression serious and eyes fixed on Onryomon, waiting for the ghostly digimon to make another move.

Onryomon righted herself. The bandages wrapped around one half of her face were beginning to unravel and fall to the ground; her hair was obscuring it, falling like a white curtain to block the view; as she lifted her head, her hair shifted just enough to reveal that where the bandages were falling away, there was... just nothing underneath it, a smoky pit of nothingness, and the white makeup on her face was like a cracking mask around it.   
She lifted her hands to her face and began to scrabble at it, almost but not quite clawing, as she began to back away.

Shaolimon was already preparing a counter to an attack that never came. "Dragon's Breath!" she cried, leaping backwards to put a bit more space between her and Onryomon; she procured from thin air a tankard of _something_ , and she took a deep swig of it. She reared her head back and spat out a stream of an amber liquid, which ignited in brilliant golden flames the moment it touched the air.

When the flames hit her, Onryomon collapsed and stopped moving entirely; and Shaolimon alighted on the ground, frowning.

She didn't move; Peter could have been imagining it, but he swore she glanced at him and nodded her head, just barely, almost imperceptibly.

Either way, he nodded to himself and walked towards Onryomon himself.

Peter didn't know exactly _why_ he was doing what he was doing, except for the fact that... it was still Banmon, right? And if this ended badly for him, so be it.   
He picked up the bandage on the ground from where it had fallen on the ground, and he crossed to the unmoving Onryomon. He knelt to the ground beside her and began to re-wrap the bandage around the void in her face. It was inelegant and difficult, because he didn't want to risk angering her, and she had a lot of hair that needed considering, but the entire time, Onryomon didn't move.

Once the bandage was re-wrapped around her face, Onryomon began to glow white, and in mere moments, she was replaced with an unconscous Banmon.

It was quiet again for a moment, the stillness of the evening finally having a chance to truly set in. Theo stood, holding Martyamon; Peter knelt, holding Banmon; Jen stood to the side, hands in her pockets, watching Shaolimon watch Peter.

The red panda looked at Banmon and Peter, and she sighed, bowing her head and closing her eyes. She was overtaken by a golden glow and a moment later, she was Lurumon again.

Peter looked over his shoulder at her, eyebrow raised. He wasn't going to complain, but he did want to ask _why_ she hadn't taken her chance, but couldn't find a good way to phrase it.

"We'll take her doing the dark digivolve thing and cance it out with you helping us taking care of SkullSatamon and we'll call it even then, yeah?" Jen said, breaking the silence.

Peter looked at Jen with a quizzical expression, but Lurumon, beside her, nodded.

"Alright," Peter said slowly, picking Banmon up. He pulled his D-Rive out of his pocket and pressed the button down, and in a flash, Banmon was safely minimized where she could come to no further harm.

Theo looked between Jen and Peter, and then down at Martyamon in his arms.   
"Okay, _somebody_ needs to explain to me what's going on, because I know a lot less than I thought I did."

"Don't we all," Peter muttered bitterly.

 

***

Martyamon was alright, just a bit worn out for the trouble.

Theo carried her as he walked with Peter; she looked like an oversized stuffed animal when she wasn't complaining, eating, or fighting, so any second looks they got were easily dismissable. As it turned out, Theo's apartment building wasn't _that_ far from Peter's place; they weren't in the same neighborhood, but it wasn't too extreme of a walk, and their paths coincided as they both began their treks towards their respective homes.

Theo asked questions about digimon, and everything that had happened the past few months, and how normally, he and the girl with the red panda were at odds; while Peter didn't answer _everything_ to his satisfaction, he didn't try to pry, not wanting to be rude or invasive. He explained what he knew and admitted to the gaps in his knowledge, and while he was hedgy about a few things, Theo saw no reason not to beleive that he was telling what he understood of the truth.

He'd have to ask Martyamon about it when she was more lucid.

As Peter signalled that he was about to take the turn down the road to his own place, and that their paths would diverge here, Theo waved him goodbye -- or, he tried to. Didn't really have the free hand to do so. You get the point.

He knew he had just happened into a friendship with a mouthy little manticore; his own involvement in this was drastically less than these people, that Martyamon seemed to only be a bit player in what was far, far greater than he had initially thought.

Still... when a little monster takes a metaphorical bullet (or, such as it was, skeleton's energy beam) for you, he couldn't help but understand, at least a little, why these people were so damn invested in this, instead of just letting the monsters work it out between themselves.

He was going to buy Martyamon a goddamn cheeseburger tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theo and Martyamon belong to Kiwi (flykiwiflyaway on tumblr), and are used here by special permission.


	18. Episode 18: State of My Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy November! NaNoWriMo means that I should be able to plow out a few chapters of this ON TIME for the next few months. Yaaaaaaaaay!  
> ...  
> :'D

"I understand your point," Lurumon said, splaying her hands out palms-up, "it's just that I think it's more important right now to keep things from getting worse."

"I know that!" Shitomon said, folding her arms and looking a bit defensive, a little bit like her pride had been wounded. "It's just that--" she cut herself off, trying to find the words.

Once again, she, Lurumon, Hulimon, and each of their respective humans were seated in a little awkward six-person circle in Ryan's living room.  
(Ryan, see, was the only one of the three who had his place to himself, so he was the only one who could hold Digimon Discussion Times without worrying about annoying a roommate, as Jen did, or family, as Eli did. This had inadvertently turned his living room into the meeting space of choice.)

It hadn't yet been a full twenty-four hours since Lurumon had fought SkullSatamon and Onryomon, and in the aftermath, she and Shitomon were in stark disagreement about it. As Lurumon and Shitomon had their back-and-forth, Jen was on her phone, Ryan was listening intently with fingers interlaced and his elbows on his knees, and Eli was batting at the curtains by the couch like an unenthusiastic cat.

"I just don't understand how you can put everything aside like that," Shitomon said slowly. "After everything, all these years, and everything they've done-- not just in general, but I mean specifically, what their actions have done to you. And Hulimon, too."

"Hey, don't bring me into this," Hulimon said, though he knew full well that he was as fully involved as anyone else, even if his only contributions to the conversation so far had been unsolicited commentary.  
(It was.)

"I know that," Lurumon said, frowning and looking down. "But at this point, I think that it's too late to try and patch over a leak, when the entire dam has already burst. The best we can do is, metaphorically speaking, try to evacuate the village."

"Yikes. Metaphor's a bit on the nose, isn't it?" Hulimon said, a bit more soberly than he usually said anything. Lurumon smiled faintly, but humorlessly.  
Jen and Eli glanced at each other, not _entirely_ sure what was being referred to but having a vague idea; Ryan raised an eyebrow, and Eli mouthed _tell you later_ soundlessly.

Shitomon frowned, looking at the floor. She understood the weight of Lurumon's statement, and her choice of metaphor as well.  
"I understand what you mean," she said, but then she shook her head. "I just-- I don't see how you could put that aside and walk away from a chance." She looked up. "Even if patching a leak doesn't undo the dam breaking, if you have the chance, shouldn't you take it?"

"Not to play devil's advocate or anything," Hulimon pointed out, "but you've walked away from a chance, too."

"Yeah, but--" Shitomon said, and she stopped; she was trying to come up with a compelling reason to defend herself with, but she was stumbling. Hulimon was, of course, talking about the day she had fought IlDoctorimon, and and had walked away from the chance to eliminate Raumon.  
Shitomon knew she couldn't say that it was because Natalie had been in the way; if she really had wanted to, that wouldn't have been an obstacle at all. She could have easily forced Natalie away if push came to shove.

But she hadn't, and she was trying to figure out a good enough reason to come back with. It wasn't working.

Shitomon knew there was something else at play, even if... well. It wasn't _just_ her pride. It was her pride, her conviction, the entire core of her belief system, and some other stuff, too, all of which kept her from being comfortable admitting that there were things that influenced her decision more than just _well, there was a human in the way_.

This new information -- the fact that the refugees keep corrupting and yet coming back down from it, and the fact that there were other digimon popping up... all of this complicated things greatly, and the news, however vague, that Martyamon had provided (that Lurumon had heard Jen had heard Theo had heard Martyamon say-- what was that? Fourth-hand information?) about the digital world, about why she had come over, was clearly not sitting well with any of them, least of all Shitomon.

It was a lot.

 

***

The actual publicized digimon encounters had died down somewhat. Camazmon had been the last high-profile one, and that was like, a whole ten days ago! There was little coverage of SkullSatamon outside of the usual glitchy pictures, but, hey, those could have been photoshopped, right?  
Right.

Somehow that didn't make Meghan feel any better.

Maybe because _she_ knew it wasn't, and she -- like everyone else in their group -- felt like she was walking on eggshells, waiting for something else to go wrong. _She_ knew that there had been at least three emergents in the last couple days alone. _She_ knew it was only a matter of time.

Honestly, it was kind of getting to her.

Weeks of uncertainty, paired with her best friend with whom she shared almost all of her personal space (Oremon) being on-and-off moody, on top of everyone else having their problems, and her mother freaking out about digimon, and Xander's questionable advice about her mother, and her own lack of getting out, and... and, and, and.  
Not to be too repetitive, but _it was a lot._

So when Natalie asked if she wanted to meet up and hang out, she was prepared to take the offer, just to have an excuse to get out of her head, room, and house for a little while.

"I swear to god, if anything happens today," Natalie said in between sips of iced tea, and by 'anything' she meant 'digimon', "I'm just going to completely lose my shit. Right here in the food court. It'll be a huge scene."

"I can't even say I'd stop you," Meghan said. "Like, that'd be totally understandable."

"Man, you won't hold me back? What kind of friend even are you?" Natalie said with a wry smile.

Meghan paused, and tapped her chin in thought. "I'd hold your drink while you flipped out."

"Okay, that's fair."

They had both agreed to keep the subject off digimon as best they could, and were in a public space -- the mall -- to help enforce that rule, but that didn't mean that they were above making some jokes about it here and there, because, heey, when it's basically consuming your life and brainspace, you use what release valves you can.

"Your term starts up soon, right?" Meghan said as they began to walk through the throngs of people.

"Yeah, on Monday," Natalie said, frowning faintly; she had kind of put out of her mind the very concept of class starting again, so distracted she had been by, you know. Monsters. So much so that the fact that it was Saturday now only barely registered.  
She was already dreading it; it meant being back in proximity to see Ryan on a semi-regular basis, since they were in the same department, and even without the digimon crap, it was already bound to be awkward and uncomfortable.  
"You?"

"I still have a week left," Meghan said, stretching her arms above her head. Her older brother had already amscrayed back out east, and so the house had felt kind of weirdly empty again. "I know because next weekend is my last weekend before break is done, and that weekend is Xander and his band's concert--"

"How's that going for you, by the way?" Natalie said, and Meghan blinked, stopping for a half-step.

"How's what going?"

"Your thing with Xander," Natalie said, and she smiled faintly at the slightly alarmed expression that graced Meghan's face for a half-a-second before she fixed it. "I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I just kind of assumed."

"Is it that obvious?" Meghan said after a moment a bit sheepishly. (She could practically hear Oremon make a little _hmph_ noise.)

"Well, not so much, but I'm perceptive," Natalie said, grinning. "I wouldn't have taken him for your type."

"Oh? What's that supposed to mean?" Meghan said, putting her hands on her hips. She wasn't really offended, but she was putting on the act.

"Mostly that he's-- how do I put this gently..."

"Kind of a dick?" Meghan provided, and Natalie almost choked on her tea.

"I wasn't going to say it that way. I might have said _abrasive_. _Unsubtle_. ... _blunt,_ maybe?" She paused. "Though come to think of it, I suppose it kind of makes sense, considering how well you manage with goats..."

Meghan stuck her tongue out. Again, she wasn't actually offended, and her tone of voice gave her away, even if her cheeks were tinged a little bit pinker than usual underneath all the freckles. "It's a lot of posturing, mostly, I think? Not to play up some like _oh it's different_ thing, but... you know?"

"Like a punk rock peacock," Natalie mused aloud and Meghan snickered before continuing.

"Well, as far as I know, we're not actually going out or anything. He's just invited me out a couple times and to a couple of his bands' concerts--"

"Those all totally constitute dates," Natalie said matter-of-factly, nodding sagely. "It's science."

"You're an english major, you're like, contractually obligated to be bad at science."

"Hush."

 

***

Luckily, Natalie didn't have to have a digimon-fueled freakout in the food court; nothing happened, nobody messaged the group about any incidents elsewhere, and all was well. But for the knowledge that their digimon partners were on-hand, it was almost entirely... _normal_.  
They cracked slightly-morbid jokes about how many of the stores in the mall were struggling; they remarked that in a couple years it would make a good zombie apocalypse setting, if zombies weren't the most horrendously overplayed thing in existence; they debated what was primed to fill the cultural void that the oversaturation of zombies had left behind.

( _Clowns?_ Meghan had suggested; _I'll take a thousand more zombies before I take clowns,_ Natalie had said with disdain, and the sheer look of disgust on her face as she said it had cracked Meghan up.)

Oremon, as he always did, invited himself out of Meghan's D-Rive once they were safely inside of her car, but he said very little, sitting with arms folded and eyes fixed out the window.

"Any reason you're acting like a grumpy five year old?" Meghan asked, sticking her tongue out playfully.

"No," Oremon said, in a fashion completely consistent with grumpy five year olds.

Meghan was about to make a joke about this, but she-- not _thought better of it_ , but she decided not to.

Oremon had been grumpier than usual, and he had been for... gosh, the better part of the month. Ever since the catalyst digivolutions started happening, really, and Meghan had the feeling she kind of knew what was bothering him, but trying to pry him open would do no good.  
Which, frankly, kind of annoyed the hell out of her, because she knew that he wouldn't be able to actually move past it unless he talked about it, but getting him to talk was like trying to politely ask a brick wall to step aside.

The rest of the car ride home was one made in relative quiet.

 

***

It was getting dark later that night, and it had been quite some time since Ryan's apartment had cleared out of people and digimon that didn't live there.

"I appreciate your investment in polishing my floor. Can you do the kitchen next?"  
_You're polishing the floor_ is a joke that Ryan had picked up ever since Shitomon had digivolved into her rookie level; her long faux-ears dragging on the floor were really good at attracting dust, and she had a habit of pacing whenever she was preoccupied with something, which she quite often was.

She was indeed doing just that now, pacing in a little circle; she had been doing this on and off all evening, stopping only to occasionally stop and ponder, move a few feet to the left, and resume pacing.

"If Lurumon and Hulimon think what they do," Shitomon muttered to herself, barely registering that Ryan was talking to her, "then... but... hm..."

Even though he knew she wasn't listening to him, Ryan still responded to her. "It's hard to tell what Hulimon is thinking at any time, I'd really only say we know what Lurumon thinks."

Shitomon continued, and just as Ryan suspected, he was being ignored. "But I guess Hulimon didn't really say much, so it's really just Lurumon, but still, I can't remember the last time she was wrong..." She trailed off, frowning as she came to a stop, putting her hands on her hips; their conversation had given her a lot to think about.  
"What do you think, Ryan?" she asked, looking over at him where he sat on his couch.

He blinked, not expecting to be addressed, and he sighed, scratching at his jaw in thought.

"Shit, fucked if I know. Not to like, abdicate responsibility or anything, but this is your mission, not mine, I'm afraid I'd give you shit advice."

Shitomon looked at him and tilted her head. "I asked for your opinion, though."

 

"Is it a copout to say I think you should do what you think is right?"

"It absolutely is."

Ryan shrugged one shoulder. "Well, I tried," he said, having not tried at all. He opened his mouth to say something else, maybe to actually give advice, but the both of them were immediately distracted by Ryan's D-Rive, on the coffee table, lighting up.

They exchanged glances as Ryan picked the device up, checked the radar, and hissed a profanity.

(It wasn't going unnoticed that they were getting less and less breathing room between big incidents the past few days, and whether this was about to become a pattern, or if it was just a sudden spike, was impossible to tell.)

 

***

Meghan and Oremon were in Meg's room; Meg was working on the digital touch-up of some of her recent photos, and Oremon was... well, to be perfectly honest, Oremon was brooding. Even more obviously than usual, at that; he was sitting on his futon, arms folded, staring restlessly into the middle distance, and he had been for most of the evening.

It was only now that Oremon seemed to find his voice again.

"How much longer is it going to be before the risk outweighs any benefit?" he said, appropos of nothing; it was hard to tell if Meghan was more taken aback by his sudden speaking up after being so steadfastly tight-lipped all day, or more baffled at what he actually said.

"What?" she said, blinking a couple times in bewilderment.

"The next time a digimon incident happens," Oremon said, "what if I have to digivolve to ultimate?"

"I... don't exactly follow," Meghan said slowly. She felt a sudden creeping sense of dread, but she couldn't quite place why.  
(She probably could, if she wanted to, but. Sh.)

Oremon wasn't being particularly helpful. "What if something had happened today?"

"It didn't, though," Meghan pointed out, still not entirely following Oremon's line of logic.

"But what if it had, and I'd had to digivolve to ultimate in a place like that?" he said, and Meg didn't like where this was going.

"Then-- then we'd have worked it out if it had happened, but it didn't? I don't get your point, here-- do you think I should just avoid public spaces altogether or something?" she asked, not quite sarcasm and not quite irony in her voice, tinged with the barest bit of annoyance.

"I didn't say that," Oremon said back, defensive; he folded his arms. "I'm just saying that I don't understand why you're not more concerned about it."

"I'm always concerned about digimon stuff happening, you know," she said, tilting her head.

"But it's looking like it's more likely that I'll have to digivolve to ultimate," Oremon pointed out, "and it seems to me that we have a pattern of that not going well for our side."

"... yeah?" she said. It wasn't that she hadn't considered it, hadn't worried about it -- it was just... what could she do if it did happen, you know, except try to handle it in whatever way it manifested? "It still sounds like you're telling me that I should just, like, avoid going out?"

"I'm just saying that maybe you should try to avoid situations where you might get hurt," Oremon said, trying to keep his voice even with mixed success.

"' _You_ should try to avoid'?" Meghan repeated, feeling her own voice get a little bit tighter. "You're not including yourself in that?"

Oremon didn't respond immediately, and he chose his words carefully. "I should deal with my own problems. You shouldn't be implicated in them."

"I don't exactly have a choice, you know," Meg said, gesturing at her D-Rive next to her computer.

"You could choose to stay where it's sa--"

"You're starting to sound like my mom," Meghan cut him off, and she _almost_ said that in a laugh, except she found no part of it funny. She didn't want to admit she was actually kind of hurt, but whether she admitted it or not, it was glaringly obvious.

Oremon paused, tight-lipped for a moment, and he glanced towards the window as though he expected to see anything there. "Maybe--" he began, but she cut him off immediately.

"If you say she has a point, I'm going to _flip every last bit of my shit,_ " she said sharply, brushing her hair over her shoulder to distract from the fact that there were the first hints of pinprick tears gathering in her eyes for reasons she didn't care to fully examine right now.  
(But, you know, maybe it was something about being condescended to and given this _bloo hoo keep yourself safe and keep your distance_ crap that she got tired of when she stopped reading teen romance novels in high school.)  
"Unless you think _I_ can't handle you like Natalie and Xander and Peter have managed to handle their partners--"

"I could hurt you!" Oremon snapped, cutting her off in turn, and that, _that_ , was the straw that broke Meghan's proverbial back.

"So could a really dedicated dude with a spoon!" she snapped right back, balling her hands into fists. "What's your point!?"

The words came flowing out of her practically unbidden, the culmination of a frustration that had been bubbling below the surface for-- well. For a while now. She understood what Oremon's point was-- really, she did -- but between everything else, she didn't need Oremon pulling this crap, too. She didn't need _him_ starting to act like she couldn't handle what she was getting into, and she _definitely_ didn't need him to be even more self-pitying.

Oremon's retort was a defensive one, and he stood up, apparently unable to take this (literally) sitting down: "I'm just trying to keep you from getting hurt!"

"Yeah, because I'm not going to be hurt at all by you pulling this _oh I'm so dangerous stay away for your own good_ crap! By your logic, I should just stay inside all day just so I don't accidentally get hit by a runaway truck!"

They were both raising their voices as they snapped back and forth at each other.

"A runaway truck doesn't live with you!" Oremon retorted, gesturing at the room around them.

"A runaway truck isn't my best friend, you colossal dumbass!" Meg said, tone harsh and tight, and the words came pretty much unbidden. "But hell, you're not doing a much better job of it lately!"

Oremon looked taken aback, and Meg almost instantly regretted her words, but it was too late to back down now. She put her hands on her hips, her cheeks red and her eyes shiny with held-back tears.  
Oremon opened and closed his mouth a couple times, and said nothing. He brushed past Meghan and all but stormed out of the room.

Meghan listened to the sound of his hooves not-so-subtly descending the stairs, and she stood, practically rooted to the spot.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her arm.

_Idiot._

She wasn't sure if her internal monologue was referring to Oremon or to herself, and moreover, she wasn't sure it mattered.

 

***

Oremon realized pretty much immediately that he had made a mistake the moment he walked out the back door, because, in case you forgot, he was a four foot tall bipedal talking goat, but at this point he had already made his mistakes, so he may as well just plow forward.  
No, he _didn't_ want to think about how many further mistakes might be avoided if he had literally any other approach to problems, thanks.

He was lucky that it was getting dark; the street lights were just now flickering on, and he relegated himself to the alleys behind houses, sticking to anywhere he could easily duck behind a fence or a garbage can or even a tree in a pinch. It hadn't been the first time he had had to make an excursion like this; any of the few times he had left the house before Meghan got the D-Rive...

Hmph.

He kicked a pebble.

It wasn't that he didn't think Meghan could deal with things. It was more that he didn't want to put _her_ in the line of fire. He had thought it all day when he had been minimized, practically floating next to her and seeing her speak happily and freely about everything _but_ digimon. It had felt like she hadn't had the chance to do that nearly enough, lately, and...  
Well, it was hard not to feel like that was kind of on him, being the digimon who implicated her in all of this.

Maybe it was Natalie's comment about his own resemblance to _him_ that stuck in his mind.  
(It wasn't that he _hated_ Xander, he just... well, Oremon saw a lot of himself in him, which. Well.)

_Hmph_.

... he didn't want to be the reason for her to be so much as unhappy, let alone possibly get her hurt.

He felt a deep familiar ache somewhere in his chest, of a long-forgotten memory. ... correction: half-forgotten, half-repressed.  
It had welled up inside him back when IlDoctorimon had first appeared, and he had done an admirable job of stomping it down since then, but... the more that every single one of them went berserk when they digivolved to ultimate, the more it seemed that digivolving to ultimate was going to be necessary, and the more risk he was realizing he posed, the more unavoidable it seemed to be.

He looked down at one hand and frowned as he clenched it into a fist (as best he could with hooves).

_You're being selfish,_ a nagging imaginary voice in the back of his head -- an imaginary voice that sounded suspiciously like Meg's, said. _You're just as likely to do more harm than good, throwing a tantrum like this._

He told that little voice to shut up, shaking his head to dispel the thought. It would be for the better.

It would be the right thing to do, for everyone's sake, _especially_ Meg's. He couldn't risk losing control, and it had been on his mind for the past month-- maybe even more, maybe since the first time they had heard from Shitomon and company about the alleged corruption.  
He knew, however distantly and foggily, that he had made that mistake before. He wasn't going to be responsible for something like that again.

_Do you really think you're the only one who worries about this? Who has a past?_

But when he really thought about it, Raumon, Desmon, Banmon-- even Gelermon, who hadn't digivolved to ultimate yet; all of them, he felt, for all the damage and trouble they had caused, could cause...  
He couldn't place why, but he felt like it was different, because he knew himself, and he knew ( _"knew"_ ) better about himself.

( _Why do you think you're so special?_ he asked himself. _Why do you think that Meg couldn't handle it? If Natalie and Xander and Peter could help bring their partners back down-- did that speak more to your own self-pity parade, or--?_ )

Of course it spoke more about him than about her. She would be fine-- hell, she'd probably be better off!  
(He wasn't sure he could say the same about himself, but, you know, that wasn't the point.)

_Isn't it a bit suspicious that what's 'for the better' is what lets you feel bad for yourself?_

This went on, back and forth, in his head for quite a while as he walked; he quickly became acutely aware that he was, in fact, arguing with himself, and he was glad he didn't have any audience except for himself.

He frowned and stopped as he caught scent of something unfamiliar on the air. He furrowed his brow, and looked at the sky, and then his surroundings. He was at the old soccer field; there were a few lonely cars parked nearby, but for the most part, it was quiet and bereft of people. He had been following his feet, taking turns to avoid the flickering street lamps.  
(They had been flickering a lot, hadn't they?)

Wasn't it odd, though?  
The lights on the field were flickering, too.

...

_Dammit._

 

***

Meghan was pacing restlessly in her room. It had only been _maybe_ ten minutes since Oremon had stormed out, but it had felt like ten hours. She looked outside; it was getting dark, and she didn't want to go running after him, because she didn't want to potentially exacerbate a problem, but if he hadn't come back in the first two minutes...  
She realized she maybe had gone a bit far with that last comment, but as far as she saw it, Oremon was being _a complete emo dickhead_.

She hadn't let go of her D-Rive. She kept it held tightly in her hands, watching the path of the little glowing shape of Oremon's head as it moved further and further from the center of the radar, though he was moving slowly. She guessed he was heading wherever seemed to be the most stealthy, but who knew how long that would last?

(And what if someone -- or something -- else ran into him...?)

And anyway that's how Meghan ended up pulling on her sneakers and running down alleyways to try and catch up with a talking goat at 8:52 PM on a fine August evening.

Not long after she left her house, she felt her heart skip a beat as a new dot appeared on her radar.

_Karatenmon. Ultimate level._

Great!  
Totally great.

Not great.

 

***

Oremon didn't have much of a chance to see Karatenmon before he was quite, quite familiar with it. That is to say, Karatenmon was dark, and dropped out of the quickly-darkening sky, and it wasn't particularly interested in wasting time.

It was a humanoid bird, covered in black feathers, distinctly Japanese-looking armor and pants, and with black wings bursting out of its back. In either of its hands it clutched a golden sword, and it made its opening move by attempting to spear Oremon on said swords.

"Harmony Swords!" it cawed as it dropped from the sky, striking out with its swords glowing brightly.

"Shit!"

Oremon threw himself inelegantly backwards, which is a polite way of saying he jumped back and fell on his ass to avoid the attack. Instead, Karatenmon's swords took a chunk out of the grass, and the bird-man stood up straight, staying his blades long enough to consider Oremon before him.

"You are alone? How fortuitous," Karatenmon mused, and Oremon felt a deep sense of an emotion that could only be described as _oh, fuck_. "And it's _you_. Fortune smiles on me."

"Why does every single one of you seem to think it matters if there's only one of us to pick off," Oremon muttered, more to himself than Karatenmon, but he was overheard anyway.

"Allow me to ammend. You do not have your human," Karatenmon said plainly, and Oremon gritted his teeth and growled. "Which is the far more relevant point than whether or not you have your little allies, yes?" He could see the smirk on Karatenmon's face, even among the black feathers and the low light, and he growled. This seemed only to amuse Karatenmon. "I see I was not misinformed, then."

"Let me guess," Oremon said, standing up to his full height and standing his ground, "you're one of the ones who thinks you'll get the glory of being a hero for picking us off."  
A little voice in his head, a one that still sounded remarkably like Meg, was yelling at him:  
_WHY ARE YOU TAUNTING IT. RUN._

He ignored it.

"It's not really a matter of thinking so," Karatenmon said, his gaze piercing and unwavering. "Though I will admit at this point it's more a matter of _justice_ at this point, more than of _glory_. Feather Flare!" Karatenmon cut himself off to attack, flapping his wings hard. This released a razor-sharp wave of feathers, fired at Oremon in a powerful shockwave blast of air. They sliced through the chain-link fence behind Oremon, so simply imagine how they cut through flesh.

Oremon lifted one arm to protect his face as the blast of feathers hit him, and he gritted his teeth as they stuck into his arm like knives. Even taking the brunt of that attack was a lot-- Karatenmon was an ultimate, after all.  
He vaguely questioned why he knew that, but that led him to a thought that Karatenmon felt familiar, and he didn't care to examine that, but it turned out he might not get the choice.

"I can see it in your eyes," Karatenmon said smoothly, again taking another couple steps towards Oremon and brandishing his swords dramatically. "You remember me."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Oremon said gruffly, cautiously lowering his arm away from his face.

"I remember _you_ , you know," Karatenmon said, and a sort of bitterness started creeping into his voice. "Even if you're smaller than you used to be--"

"Oremon!"

Meghan's voice interrupted Karatenmon -- a whole lot of interrupting was going on tonight. The sound of her voice drew Oremon's attention, and he glanced immediately to the side. For her to have caught up with him so quickly, she must either have been following him almost immediately, or following him very quickly-- or both.

"Harmony Swords!"

Karatenmon took advantage of this to lunge forward, wielding both swords to strike Oremon hard, sending the goat tumbling into the half-sliced-up chain link fence with a clatter.

Meghan didn't stop-- in fact if anything she picked up her pace, breaking from a run into a sprint as she saw Oremon take the hit.  
Her D-Rive began to glow, as though it just had been waiting for the chance to be in range of her partner.

"Oremon, drive evolve to... Ibexmon!"

Ibexmon didn't wait a half a second, throwing himself at Karatenmon before he had even fully righted himself-- Meg got the distinct impression that he was going to lunge back at the weird bird-man whether he had evolved or not, and she actually wondered if he even realized he had evolved.

"Headstrong Charge!"

Ibexmon bowed his head as he ran at Karatenmon, even with as little room as he had to build up inertia. He hooked Karatenmon on his horns, or at least tried to-- the bird-man grabbed a hold of Ibexmon's horns and began to try and wrench the goat's head away. The few people who were milling around in the parking lot had noticed that something was going on, and were starting to look, keeping a safe distance.

"Get out of here!" Ibexmon snarled, digging his hooves into the grass; Meghan knew she was speaking to him. There was only that now half-sliced-up chain link fence between her and the fight, and she had come right up to it, hooking her fingers on some of the intact segments with one hand and tightling gripping her D-Rive in the other.

"Because you were taking care of it so well yourself!" Meghan yelled back, feeling tears well up in her eyes again.  
(If she hadn't arrived this quickly, how much longer would Oremon have lasted against Karatenmon?)

"Concerned for her safety?" Karatenmon said, tone mocking as he wrenched Ibexmon's head away, practically tossing the goat aside. "That's a new one. That's hilarious."

"Shut the fuck up," Ibexmon snarled as he got to his feet. He didn't dare glance over his shoulder, but he knew Meghan was close--

"Feather Flare!"

As Karatenmon prepared to release his attack, something inside Ibexmon snapped-- perhaps at the revelation that Karatenmon was about to use an attack that could have caught Meg in the crossfire.  
_Perhaps_. No shit, sherlock.

Meghan almost dropped her D-Rive when it began to make that _unearthly screeching noise_ , and she felt her heart drop into her stomach. She looked back at Ibexmon, and indeed, orange circuits and vein-like patterns were beginning to seep up his body, and a black glow was beginning to consume everywhere not touched by the orange light.

Karatenmon fell into a defensive stance, raising his swords and not wanting to risk touching Ibexmon just yet.

Underneath his skull mask, Ibexmon's eyes were filled by an orange glow; the noise he made was between a roar and a gutteral scream, pained and feral, like a trapped and wounded animal, but there was also a fury to it, a berserker rage that threatened to tear at Ibexmon's throat until he tasted blood. It began to meld with the screeching noise, and too-familar words could be made out in the noise.

 

"Ibexmon, catalyst evolve to--!"

Ibexmon was surrounded by the same sphere of glitching orange and black light that was becoming uncomfortably familiar. It began to grow in size, and when it sheared away, the new form left behind didn't inspire a lot of confidence.

He was now larger than he had been as Ibexmon by a fair margin, but his basic bodily shape stayed intact-- a large (very large) quadrupedal goat, black and burnt orange in colour. In a mocking echo of Ibexmon's skull mask, the flesh had all been stripped away from his head, leaving only bleached bone sitting in the nest-like framing that an ochre-coloured lion's mane provided. He had four horns once more, as he did as Oremon, but now they were curved and arrayed like a Jacob ram instead of a goat, with the lower pair curling up near his face and the upper pair sweeping back, and between the points of these upper horns, a black flame was suspended in the air, flickering gently.  
Bone protruded from his haunches, shoulders, and the base of his spine, while ivory rings were settled around his elbow joints. His hooves were that same bleached-bone colour, and the slightly shaggy fur on his limbs had turned a darker, burnt-orange colour than it had been as Ibexmon.

And that wasn't even getting into the eyes. He had five eyes, now-- actually, no, he had seven. There were five on his face, and one each on his shoulders, each of them yellow with bright-red rectangular pupils, and none of them seemed to focus on the same spot, or focus on any one spot for longer than a few moments at all.

No longer a simple fluffy nub, his tail was long and thrashed wildly-- which made it hard to tell, immediately, that it was in fact a cobra with ruby-red eyes and orange scales, its hood splayed out wide and its fangs on display, as long as a human head.

"Cabramon!" he announced, rearing back onto his hind legs and smashing his hooves back down into the ground beneath him, and the grass around his feet seemed to wither and die at the touch of his hooves. His voice was a rattling hiss, quite befitting his skeletal visage.

 

"Oremon!" Meghan yelled, clenching her hands into fists, a deep sick-ish feeling in the pit of her stomach.  
(This was, after all, what Oremon had _just_ been afraid of, right?)

Karatenmon had a glint of regret in his eyes, like maybe he had bitten off more than he could chew. He didn't have time to think about it; Cabramon charged, ready to fight. He was acting like a wild berserker, tossing his head and hissing and snarling and attacking with his hooves and horns and even his teeth, all while the cobra that comprised his tail hissed and swayed and struck out. There was an uncontrollable energy to everything he did, like he had no thoughts on his mind but _killing whatever was in front of him_.

Karatenmon leapt backwards and into the air to attempt to get some breathing room, but Cabramon was having none of that.

"Obsidian Spire!" Cabramon hissed the moment Karatenmon started to fly, all of his many eyes ignited with a black energy. He smashed his hooves into the ground, and instead of cracks radiating out from the point of impact, thin streams of that same black energy began to spread, primarily shooting out underneath Karatenmon. Once underneath Karatenmon, the cracks merged and sprang upwards in a wickedly sharp, twisted black spear of intertwined glass and rock that was more than tall enough to strike Karatenmon in the air. Strange orange runes appeared across its surface, just barely pulsating with a faint glow for a split second before it shattered explosively, leaving Karatenmon to fall into the shrapnel.

Cabramon didn't wait a moment; the moment the other digimon hit the ground, he lunged forward and resumed his assualt, slamming his hooves and even attempting (though not successful) to hook Karatenmon on his horns.

It was hard to watch; Meg only barely managed not to avert her eyes.

Karatenmon swung his swords as well as his entire body in a capoeira-like motion, dispelling Cabramon and giving himself the chance to get to his feet. He huffed and looked worse for the wear, teeth gritted, swords held tightly; one of his wings looked like it might have been broken by one of Cabramon's hooves stomping on it, or possibly by Karatenmon's own falling on it funnily; it was hard to tell.

"Harmony Swords!" Karatenmon cried, lunging forward and slashing out at Cabramon, but he had a difficult time doing so, as the cobra on Cabramon's tail began to strike whenever Karatenmon drew too close to it. He managed to strike one of the eyes on Cabramon's shoulders, and it was...  
Frankly, it was not a pleasant sight, as the eye was practically punctured by Karatenmon's blade, and began to seep a black ichor in lieu of blood. Meghan felt almost sick, and she couldn't hold back the quiet little not-quite-scream.

Cabramon, understandably enough, roared in pain and again attempted to catch Karatenmon on his horns, but the bird-man was moving too quickly for him to easily catch. He hissed and spat, bucking his legs and tossing his head wildly.

And beacuse that wasn't enough...

"Southern Cross!"

_BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY NEEDED, RIGHT?_  
Meghan couldn't contain her frustration as she saw the shining beam of light that came courtesy of Malakhimon as the bizarre dragon-angel came flying into view, with her human partner riding on her back.

The beam of light struck neither digimon, instead searing a cross-shaped mark in the grass, a few feet away from either. Malakhimon descended quickly, landing nearby; Ryan scrambled off of her back and took a few steps backwards while Malakhimon surged towards the fighting digimon.

"Holy Charge!"

Neither Karatenmon nor Cabramon were paying attention to the newcomer, locked in combat as they were-- but Meghan, at least, could be surprised that as Malakhimon was engulfed in light and dive-bombed into the fighting digimon, she collided primarily with Karatenmon, not the much larger target of Cabramon.

Karatenmon was send tumbling away, and Malakhimon immediately leapt backwards, wanting to put as much distance between herself and Cabramon as she could.

Meghan looked frantically over to where Ryan stood, some distance away, but he didn't seem to acknowledge her-- he was standing with his D-Rive in hand and his eyes on the fight. Cabramon, disregarding his wounded leg, didn't wait for a moment. He lunged towards Malakhimon, hissing and snarling; Malakhimon jumped into the air, spreading her wings out and avoiding his attack.

Karatenmon righted himself, and turned with some surprise to look at Malakhimon. " _You_?" the bird-man spat, and Malakhimon regarded him with a serious, severe expression that gave little away. " _You_ of all digimon shouldn't be standing in my way."

"It's not _your_ way," is all Malakhimon had to say, her voice quiet.

Cabramon, though, had something else to contribute, and he turned his attention back to Karatenmon, who was a closer target than Malkahimon, and having _something_ to attack seemed more important than _what_ he was attacking.

"Chimera Focus!" Cabramon said, his cobra tail rearing up behind him. The cobra's eyes brightly as it swayed back and forth, and his non-damaged eyes filled with the same crimson glow. He swivelled all of his eyes to focus on Karatenmon, and red light shot from each of his (not gouged-out) eyes and converged, like light being shone through a magnifying glass. It was almost intensely bright as the beams met, and they struck Karatenmon in the chest. It clearly burned, and in a matter of seconds, it had burned a hole straight through the tengu-like digimon's torso and shone out the other side.

With a cry of surprise and, most evidently, pain, Karatenmon began to shift and distort into pixels like so many digimon before him had done.

"Chimera Focus!"

Malakhimon only barely had the time to dodge out of the way of the attack; Cabramon wasn't waiting a moment before turning his quite literal sights on the champion-level digimon. She rose into the air, flapping her wings and gritting her teeth. The red light shot past her into the sky.

But Malakhimon didn't return the attack.

And even more curiously, Meghan realized--  
She wasn't attempting to digivolve so she could defeat Cabramon.

"What are you doing!?" Meghan yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth so Malakhimon -- and Ryan -- could hear her. (Though, really, she might have been yelling at Cabramon, too...)

Malakhimon regarded her for only a second, her golden eyes only daring to look away from Cabramon for moments at a time. The digimon gave no answer, merely looked at Meghan with a clear intention in her eyes; Meghan looked to Ryan, whose eyes were still firmly focused on his own partner, and she felt frustratingly helpless-- and clueless as well.

"Obsidian Spire!"

Another massive, twisted spear of rock and glass rose out of the ground, knocking Malakhimon out of the sky handily even before she fell to the ground into the knife-sharp debris.

"Shitomon!" Ryan yelled, about to run forward and intercept any way he could, clutching his D-Rive. Whether he had to be prepared for her to digivolve to Eudaemon again or if he had to be ready to recall her into his D-Rive the very second she de-digivolved, he was prepared to call this a stupid idea, a writeoff, admit that maybe they had had the wrong idea and go back to operating as they had.  
Indeed, Malakhimon wondered if she maybe had made a mistake as she felt the remnants of the attack dig into her flesh, burning as though the shards were white-hot daggers digging into her. Cabramon's eyes began to glow again.

And then they stopped.

Meghan had, like she had done more than once in her life, run forward, into the line of fire. She threw herself between Cabramon and Malakhimon, arms outstretched, as though she could stop a sixteen-foot-tall demon goat with her body.

But the thing was? It seemed to work. For the first time since evolving, Cabramon wasn't actively trying to attack something.

Malakhimon took her chance to get back up, hissing in pain as she did; she was only barely hanging on to her evolved form. Taking attacks from a berserker ultimate-level wasn't her idea of a fun time, but if she had to intervene to keep the human from getting hurt--

But she wasn't getting hurt.

Cabramon took a few steps towards Meghan, and Meghan felt herself shake, but she held her ground, arms still held out and face resolute and _absolutely not with tears in her eyes_.

She tried to tell herself, as Cabramon drew closer to her, that this was still Oremon; that the idea of him ever hurting her was ridiculous.

The hissing of the cobra on his tail didn't do much to make her feel better, as it rose to its full height and spread its hood out in a clear threat. She felt the intense glare of every one of Cabramon's eyes focusing on her, and she wasn't sure if it was better or worse than if his eyes had all been looking in different directions.

He drew close to her, and the ragged, rattling sound of his breath felt almost defeaningly loud as his skeletal face drew close to her.

"You're not going to hurt me, you dumbass," she said quietly; it was hard to tell if it was her trying to reassure herself, her trying to reassure Cabramon, or her commanding him. In response, Cabramon only exhaled a ragged breath that smelled like something awful and rotten, but Meghan braced herself through it.

She reached out and, against her better judgement, balled her hand into a loose fist and gently bumped her knuckles against Cabramon's forehead.

From that point, a pale orange glow began to engulf Cabramon.

As it began to consume him, Meghan thought for a split second that she saw the glow take on a different, unfamiliar form, but she blinked and it was gone. So, too, was Cabramon-- and splayed out on the ground, unconscious and crumpled, was Oremon.

Meghan almost immediately fell down to her knees and, fuck it, fuck you, she was crying. She felt she was allowed, dammit.  
"You absolute _dickhead_!" she said in a half-sob, not sure if Oremon could even hear her. "Why the hell did you have to worry me like that you _jerk_!"

Malakhimon sighed heavily, and didn't yet de-digivolve; she would prefer to be able to fly back to their place, after they had followed Karatenmon all the way here from the south side of town, and so she couldn't yet rest.

Ryan walked over to Malakhimon and placed a reassuring hand on her side. He still didn't _get it_ , but he felt like it might have been in poor taste to ask why Meg was insulting her unconscious partner.  
(Truth be told, he kind of understood, on some level, even without "getting it" intellectually.)

"Looks like we've done what we need to do," he said, loud and pointed and quite obviously saying it for Meg's benefit as much as anything.

Meg, on about a two-second delay, looked over her shoulder at Ryan and Malakhimon. She wiped her tears away with the back of her sleeve and furrowed her brow.  
(Now would be as good a time as any, right?  
... and why had Malakhimon shown up only to...?)

"It looks like the emergent was taken care of, yes," Malakhimon said, her voice a little tight, and she nodded slowly.

Meg blinked a couple times.  
(Was it just her, or were they basically pulling a _we didn't see anything, gosh, how convenient that that emergent was taken care of and we absolutely didn't run into a refugee digimon_?

Yeah, it wasn't just her.)

"You alright to go home, or do you want me to just get a ride?" Ryan asked Malakhimon and she stretched her wings out gingerly before nodding. Ryan glanced at Meg. He nodded. "Later. Tell Nat I say hi."

Meg sat kneeling on the soccer field and she watched as Ryan and Malakhimon make their exit.

"Dammit," she muttered to nobody in particular, wiping her eyes again as she minimized Oremon into her D-Rive.

 

***

When Oremon came to, he was placed comfortably on his futon, and Meg's bedroom was entirely dark. He glanced over; Meg herself was asleep. A glance at the clock; it was almost 3 AM, so he supposed that this wasn't surprising.  
He felt like he had been hit by a runaway truck.

He sat up, trying to piece together everything that had happened.

...

Hm.

He looked at his hands again.  
Karatenmon had been familiar; Karatenmon had acted like they had met before, and Oremon knew that it wasn't just a bluff.

Years ago, back in the digital world-- years before he had ever come to the real world in the first place -- he could remember vague flashes of memory.  
He remembered digimon dying at his hands, berserker rages that had arisen from a newfound power that he couldn't control. He remembered digimon swearing revenge, that justice would be served--

He sighed through his nose, glancing over at Meghan again. His eyes drifted to her D-Rive, where it sat on her bedside table.

He knew -- he could remember -- that in the past, he hadn't been half as in control of himself as he had been earlier tonight, and he couldn't help but wonder why.

But he wasn't about to complain.


	19. Episode 19: The Foxes Hunt the Hounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, a few hours late because I forgot I hadn't uploaded yet. :X Ah well, I don't think anyone particularly cares.
> 
> Away we gooo!

Sunday morning began cold (for August) and grey, but the fact that it was Sunday morning was kind of a moot point to Sam, seeing as he was presently entering hour 26 of consecutive wakefulness (give it up for hour 26!), and so the idea of distinctive days was a murky one at best.  
Admittedly, a fair part of that was because Sam's sleep schedule had already been nebulous; it was hard to say it was _worse_ , because it was hard to make a garbage fire _worse_ , but it had started skewing towards both longer consecutive wake periods followed by longer pass-out crashes, because he had long ago given up.

(So be it that he had left the house few enough times to count on one hand in the past, like, three weeks, and that was probably doing the opposite of helping.)

But more than just him having lost control of his life, this time it was because he was _busy_ \-- he had a subject to dig into, a series of ideas that had daisy-chained together and he couldn't bear to interrupt it with such trivial things as sleep.

To recap: last night, Meghan had come back with her tale of Oremon's catalyst evolution and their encounter with Ryan. As he always did whenever an emergent incident came to his attention, because _he was a fucking nerd_ , Sam had quickly made note of it, taking down where and when the emergent had occurred. He had immediately started scouring the news and discussion boards for any pictures.  
Sometimes there were more -- there was plenty of documentation of the fight between Camazmon and Draugmon, but, say, Banmon's evolution into Onryomon had gone almost entirely under the radar.

The gears had begun to turn in his head, though, as pieces of at least one corner of the puzzle began to fall together, and once he started, he wasn't about to break his streak for something as trivial as _sleep_.

"So hear me out here," Sam said, putting his hands behind his head. The sun was just about coming up, the first rays of sunlight creeping through his thick curtains providing the only light aside from his computer monitors.

Gelermon cracked an eye open, looking over at her partner from where she lay on Sam's bed. "Sup?"

"Tell me if you notice what I'm noticing here," Sam said, and Gelermon sat up so she could more clearly see the monitor as Sam pulled up several tabs, each with a picture or video clip.  
The first was one from last night-- shaky cellphone footage of Cabramon and Karatenmon in the soccer field, the characteristic distortion that accompanied a newly-emerged digimon shearing lines of pixels out of place and making it kind of hard to follow what was going on in the clip. The second was an old one -- the very first video clip of a digimon that had gone public, of Saberdramon and Corymon back in May. Meramon, Strigimon, Raremon-- he leapt back and forth in time, queuing up pictures and videos of digimon incidents.

A clip of Camazmon and Draugmon duking it out and causing massive property damage, skewed and distorted by glitchy video, played out in shaky cell phone footage. Truth be told, the video they had of ultimate-levels was even harder to make out and more garbled than the footage of champion-level emergents.  
"You with me so far?" Sam said, and Gelermon shrugged one shoulder.

"I don't know what point you're trying to make," Gelermon said, "but go ahead." Sam was visibly excited to share what he was thinking, and he was just about the only person whose parade she wouldn't merrily rain on.

"I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Here, tell me what you notice about this one."

Sam queued up a video of Draugmon's first appearance-- a clip of Frekimon herself getting tossed aside. She furrowed her brow, about to say something snide (like _ah yes truly the most dignified footage you could possibly have found of me_ , but when she opened her mouth to say it, realization struck her like a lightning bolt.

"The footage is clean," she said slowly, instead of waht she originally intended to.

The video footage of Raremon had been typically garbled and distorted, but once they were gone, replaced by the giant skull-faced bear monster, the footage was clear as crystal, even on the shaky cell phone cam recording that Sam had pulled up. Every moment of Draugmon smacking Frekimon aside like an empty can sitting in his way was undistorted and easy to make out.

"Cool, it's not just the sleep madness making my eyes fuck up," Sam said, though it was clear from his proud tone and (admittedly very tired) smirk that he had never had any doubt.

"You know," Gelermon said, "I heard you could deal with that by doing shit like... sleeping."

"Nah, I'm good," Sam said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.

"Well, I tried, don't blame me when you keel over dead."

"Don't worry, I will." Sam drummed his fingers on his arms. "Ask me what I think this means."

Gelermon snorted and took the bait. "So, tell me before you explode: what do you think this means?"

"I'm glad you asked!"

 

***

Natalie was also awake at this hour of stupid-o-clock in the morning, though she was awake much less by choice. She had tossed and turned all night, a restless anxiety having permeated every corner of her mind. She was sure that part of it was just that this was the last day of her break (so she supposed it was alright that she was getting used to being awake again?), but it would be silly to imagine that was all of it  
She heaved a heavy sigh, spreading her arms out eagle on her bed and staring at the ceiling. Was going back to sleep even worth it?

When she sat up about five minutes later, she had obviously decided that it wasn't.

"Is something wrong?" Raumon's tired voice drifted up from beyond the foot of Natalie's bed; he sounded half-asleep, but Natalie heard the sound of his bean-bag chair shifting, indicating that he was sitting up.

"Is _everything, forever_ a valid response to that?" Natalie said in the raspy not-quite-a-whisper that people use when other people in the house are still asleep.

"Yes, but that's kind of a given at this point," Raumon said in response and Natalie smiled faintly. Raumon's head popped up from beyond the edge of Natalie's bed so he could peer at her. "Is it the usual?"

 _The usual_ meant _exactly what I could reasonably expect you to be preoccupied with, because it's basically been all you've been able to think about all summer, for better or worse_.

"Kind of. Kind of that, kind of school, kind of wondering how that's going to interact with school," she said, listing off on her fingers and frowning. She paused for a moment before she spoke what was on her mind.  
"Something about what Meghan said happened last night feels really weird to me," she admitted.

Raumon thought, stroking his beak as he considered. "Because the idea of Ryan admitting to being wrong about anything is a sign of the apocalypse, maybe?" he said. As he spoke, he clambered his way up onto the bed.

"A viable possibility," Natalie said, smiling, but it fell off her face a moment later. "I guess I'm just wondering _why_. You're not wrong that it's practically a sign of the apocalypse, you know?"

Raumon didn't immediately follow, but he thought for a moment, and then he said:  
"So you're wondering what kind of apocalypse -- so to speak, anyway -- he must be worried about, to inspire this kind of change of heart?"

"I guess?" Natalie said, folding her arms. That was certainly part of it. While the others just viewed Ryan as _obnoxious_ , Natalie knew better how outstanding of a problem something really had to be for him to admit to being wrong.

(Admittedly, that was a problem the both of them had, to some degree, but even so...)

It was hard to ignore how much Ryan and Shitomon acted like they knew so much more than anyone else, but thus far, they actually _did_ seem to have at least _some_ information more than they -- that is, specifically Natalie and Raumon -- had. That, on top of the fact that they couldn't even be sure that their digimon could digivolve to ultimate safely, without doing more harm than good... she couldn't help but worry. When four out of five so far had digivolved to their next level and lost control of themselves... it was hard to feel like a sudden change of heart was anything other than a red flag.

And if Draugmon and the growing-worse digimon attacks hadn't been enough of a red flag on their own, she couldn't help but wonder.

(It wasn't just this, though. The alternative was that she was holding a grudge against him and letting that cloud her perception, and while she felt she _damn well had reason to_... well. She wondered distantly why she was more willing to prepare for the worst-case scenario, rather than entertain the possibility that he had just pulled his head out of his ass for two seconds.)

Natalie flopped back down on her bed as rain began to fall, pattering against the window.

 

***

Sam's theory as to what was going on was a bit hard to follow at first, because -- as he often did when he got excited about something -- he was a bit hard to follow; if Gelermon hadn't been well-attuned to the machinations of Sam's mind and how to decode the things he said, she might have been entirely lost.

Once he had sorted it out, it went something like this -- and strap the fuck in, because it's a bit of a _process_ , and by cutting out Sam's commentary on it it gets a third as long:

The fact that the original footage of Draugmon hadn't been distorted -- that it hadn't interfered with conventional electronics -- indicated that Draugmon was, in some way, different from other emergent digimon. Sam hadn't noticed this until now, he was quick to point out, because he hadn't really seen a point in poring over footage of the first Draugmon fight; he had been there, he had gotten as much information as he was likely to get from it.  
(He totally wasn't embarassed about not noticing this yet. Nope. Not at all.)

That in and of itself might have been _odd_ , but not enough to build a coherent theory on. Draugmon seemed to have defied their expectations in other ways -- namely, how it screwed up their D-Rives' radars, so he had thought that maybe it was just bizarre in some other ways; but the fact that it screwed up their D-Rives and its failure to screw up cameras might, despite his instincts, be unrelated to each other.

Because it had caused the distortion the second time around-- and the second time, it had behaved like any other emergent digimon. Sam figured this meant that it hadn't been newly emerged the first time they saw it-- which meant it had been around already, and seeing as they probably would have noticed a giant ice-bear (was it really a bear...?), it _probably_ had been in a smaller, more hide-able form, instead of emerging before appearing like every other hostile digimon had.

Both times, Draugmon disappeared without warning except for a little white streak-- Ratamon, almost assuredly, because what other little white nuisance did they know? Ratamon _had_ to have something to do with it, and that was only reinforced by the fact that just a couple days ago, after Peter had met what's-his-guts and Martyamon, Meghan recalled Ratamon asking Oremon if they were familiar with any other digimon partnered with humans in the area.

So, say, if Ratamon was trying to find something with a D-Rive's radar... like, say, Natalie's D-Rive...

They already knew that Ratamon had at least some ability to jump back and forth between the so-called 'cracks'-- which, if the little white terror could not only drag something as imposing as Draugmon through (what Sam could only assume were) _dimensional goddamn rifts_ , but apparently had a vested interest in either keeping it from wrecking their shit, or them from wrecking _its_ shit...  
As if they needed to realize how much more they _didn't_ know about Ratamon. This wasn't helped by the fact that Ratamon had gone AWOL, or at least become a lot less sociable than he had been at the start of summer.

So, the _too long-didn't read_ of Sam's series of thoughts:  
Draugmon was already in the real world before it was Draugmon. Ratamon _probably_ had something to do with it, and also _probably_ was part of why it was presently a giant raging murderous undead monster. Ratamon was a mystery wrapped in an Enigma,  
(Give the boy a prize.)

"... and that's what I'm thinking," Sam said, splaying his hands out in front of him. Gelermon considered him for a moment and she couldn't help but bark a laugh.

"I don't understand in the slightest _how_ you put these things together, but damn am I impressed."

Sam grinned lopsidedly, obviously quite pleased with himself. "Well, shit, someone's got to figure this out instead of just running around like the goddamn superfriends," he said, and Gelermon laughed. (He chose not to examine the vague twinge of something that was _totally not some weird form of envy_ , but, you know, shut up.)

"So what do we do with this information?" Gelermon said, standing up on the bed.

Sam paused. He had already decided he was going to hold off on telling the group just yet, though, just to get things straight before he really committed. There was one big one, after all, that he _really_ needed to confirm before he was able to do anything useful with any of this, and that one would require a little bit of field testing.

He picked his D-Rive up off his desk and turned it over in his hand, thinking. He was fitting pieces together in his brain, now that all of their group _except_ Gelermon had digivolved up to ultimate, and all of them had more or less the same thing (read: going berserker) happen.  
"I'm still working on that," he admitted. He had a theory, and to test that theory he _was_ working out a plan, but--

" _That's_ the expression of someone with a stupid plan," Gelermon said, interrupting his train of thought; Sam didn't realize he had _an expression_ and he looked up with surprise. Gelermon broke into an appropriately wolfish grin. "I'm in. What is it?"

 

***

"Not that I'm _complaining_ about it," Gelermon said, sitting shotgun in Sam's car, "but what's with this newfound desire to venture out into the cold uncaring cruel et cetera world?"

It was Monday now, just barely shy of being afternoon; Sunday had passed without any further incident, no digimon emergences as far as any of them knew, and almost all of them were willing to chalk this up as a good thing.  
Sam, however, was ever one to buck with tradition, and instead of revelling in the fact that he had neither school starting up (as did Natalie and Peter) nor a job to be at (as did Meghan and Xander), he was feeling a bit restless and aimless.

(For those of you might be curious: he had powered through until about 9 PM the previous night for a nice round 40 hours of consecutive wakefulness, and then passed out for a cool twelve. Sam made great life choices.)

Gelermon hadn't quite been expecting the casual, conversational _do you wanna go downtown today?_ that Sam had spouted off around noon, but she wasn't about to say anything about it. She had been feeling more than a little cooped up, and she vaguely contemplated whether or not anyone would notice that her ears were green if she stuck her head out the car window.  
(And then she realized she wouldn't have the self-control not to yell antagonistic things at other drivers, so she thought better of it.)

"A bit of reconnaissance, mostly," Sam said, and he shrugged one shoulder. "I just want to get a quick look at something."

"And if anything goes wrong, I can kick its ass, right?" Gelermon said, raising an eyebrow. "Because, you know. Just in case."

"Obviously."

Gelermon grinned. "Excellent," she said, balling one paw into a fist and pounding it into the palm of the opposite paw.

 

Sam smiled lopsidedly, pleased that she was so on-board with the idea. He paused for a moment. "... and, possibly more importantly, I'm hungry and if I have to eat another packet of shin ramyeon I'm _actually_ throw myself out the window, so getting food is kind of part of it."

"I'm on board with the latter," Gelermon said with a sagely nod. "How about that deli place? The one with the sandwiches as big as your head."

"Explain to me why you're assuming I'm going to continue spending money on food for you, when, strictly speaking, you don't need to eat?" Sam said bluntly, glancing over at her.

"Because if you don't then I'll give you puppy dog eyes until you do."

"A: gross. B: you couldn't pull off puppy dog eyes if you tried."

"It was worth a shot."

 

***

Lily sighed through her nose, laying in the dark and flicking through her phone before she got out of bed. She didn't have to work today unless she got called in, hence why she was still laying in bed around the ripe hour of 11 AM on a Monday morning, and she had no particular incentive to do anything else. This was -- in her opinion -- the worst possible way for things to go.  
She absolutely _hated_ not having something to keep her occupied, and she had offered to fill in for so many shifts at work that management was starting to hand-wring about paying her overtime. It wasn't that she had any particular new passion for her job, but being in an empty apartment was too damn depressing.

She wasn't sure why she kept checking on these things. She had the deep and distinct feeling that if Draugmon was going to show back up, she wouldn't be able to miss it. Sure, two data points wasn't enough to truly _confirm_ anything, but when the past two times it had shown up, he had been approaching her workplace and the club she had been at...

She had a hunch, okay?

But even so, she still always looked, checked up on the news and the videos and the social media fearmongering, just in case Draugmon had made some guest appearance somewhere.

She hated to admit it, but she _almost_ kind of hoped he would.

...

She set her phone aside and looked to her D-Rive sitting face-down on the window sill next to her bed.

She still carried the little device with her everywhere she went, even if she didn't quite know why. Maybe she hoped it'd be useful.  
This was a bit of a stretch, because with Brockmon wholesale missing, it didn't even seem to work as a radar anymore-- she wondered if it had to have some degree of proximity to work; it probably would help if the digimon attatched to it were, you know, still reliably in this plane of existence.

She knew she should try to get in contact with the other people, but she didn't even know where to start. It wasn't like she could just walk up to random people who kind of sort of looked like the people she had seen in the videos and start talking to them about monsters, right? Her only hope with her D-Rive's radar not working was to-- what? Hope she was conveniently at the same place as a digimon emergence and just hope she managed to stay out of harm's way and suspicion long enough to figure something out?

Yeah, that'd go over well.

 

***

Sam made the decision to get food on the way back, since his _mission_ would take him past the deli in question that Gelermon had requested (because of course, despite his griping, he was going to oblige her). With Gelermon minimized, he had left his car in a metered spot, thrown some change in said meter, and took off walking into the heart of downtown Atlas Park.

He kept his eyes wholly on the sidewalk as he walked, and kept his earbuds in and music up. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, one on his D-Rive and one on his phone, as though to keep track of both of them just in case.  
It wasn't a terribly busy day; it was a grey Monday late-morning, after all. The sky threatening to resume the rain that had been going on and off since yesterday _(which was suuuuch a big surprise, considering where they lived)_ only helped to keep other people off the streets.

It was the perfect day to do a little low-key looking around without dealing with the _horrible prying eyes of strangers_ , in other words, or at least as close to that ideal that he was going to get.

Both times Draugmon had showed up, it had been downtown. Not in the exact same locations, no -- Sam had to admit he didn't know off the top of his head where the second one was because frankly he spent a lot of his time actively avoiding clubs and bars, go figure, so his feet carried him to the street where they had fought Draugmon as a group.

Broken windows had been replaced and bent parking meters had been straightened out, but a lot of buildings needed more extensive fixing to take care of crashed-into walls and fire damage; parts of the street where the road and sidewalk had been damaged beyond repair were still sectioned off and being torn up, while smaller cracks had been simply tarred over as a stopgap measure.  
In his many trowlings of the news sites, he had seen more than one local talking head (and unqualified internet rando whose opinion nobody asked for) debate the point of siphoning money into this when _at any moment, another UDC could start wrecking it again_.

Good to see that the rest of the city was getting in on the constant paranoia he and the others felt, huh?

He tugged his baseball cap down to shade his eyes as he oh-so-inconspicuously took a turn, tracing the path up the street and taking notes in his head. Draugmon had taken a turn onto this street, not come straight down it, so he glanced up an intersecting street and saw, indeed, that the path of damage continued.

(He also noted that the moment it had been just Draugmon trudging a long, there was a lot less direct damage, but that could be accounted for by Raremon and its two companions, _and_ Draugmon, _and_ all five of the group, _and_ all three of the douchebag parade, all trying to fight in a space of about one and a half city blocks. He chose not to think too much about how much of the damage probably _could_ have been avoided because something something no use worrying about it now.)

He hadn't shared much of it with Gelermon, because he knew she'd just either get annoyed or take it too personally, but so much of the pontificating and debate he'd seen online had just been... well, typical of online discourse. Very few people seemed to have anything other than fear and disgust reactions to digimon, which he kind of understood, but Sam couldn't help but feel like more of them _should_ have noticed that their digimon were showing up time and time again to, you know, _solve the problems_.

Though, he guessed, Draugmon had showed up more than once, and look how well _that_ had gone.

Still-- you could only read so many _these things should just should be shot on sight_ and _we should try to capture them_ and shit before you either start letting it get to you or tuning it all out, but either way Gelermon really didn't need any more fuel for her _me and the one and a half other people I care about versus the world_ view.

He peered up at the street ahead of him; it was obviously a few weeks old now, so a lot of the minor damage had already been attended to, but he could still make some educated guesses.  
For instance, as he reached where he could reasonably assume that Draugmon _may_ have started from (based on pictures he had seen snapped, and assuming that it hadn't changed its path until it had been distracted by other digimon), he took note that he was indeed coming close to some apartment buildings and businesses with rented-out rooms above them-- residences, in more concise terms.

The awning over the door of a tall, old-looking apartment building at the intersection of two streets was standing a bit awkwardly; the bushes lining one side were half-trampled, and the trees in their little alotted circles of dirt were missing branches. He glanced up and down the way; any further up the street than that, and Sam couldn't see any evidence of anything more severe than a particularly stiff wind having happened anytime in the recent past.

Now if only it weren't _creepy as shit_ to go knocking on doors asking if they knew anything about giant monsters.

_Yeah. That'd go over well._

Well, it was something, at least, even if it was all super circumstantial.

He glanced around, up and down the street, and heaved a sigh. There was nobody around, so he pulled out and glanced down at his phone before he started walking back the way he came.  
A second later, though he was stumbling a few steps backwards, only barely avoiding crushing the bushes any more than they already were, because--

"Magic Trick!"

A familiar blue-white orb of energy smashed into the ground a few feet ahead of him, and Sam was immediately on guard as he snapped his attention up. A yellow-orange blur leapt from one of the trees with a rustle of leaves, and by the time Sam could register he was there, Hulimon was taking off at a sprint back the way they had come.

Gelermon did not wait for an all-clear sign-- she took it upon herself to materialize in a burst of green light, and when she was fully formed, she leapt into action whether Sam was ready or not.  
"Moon Howler!" she yelled, firing a green and black beam of energy from her mouth as she took off on all fours after Hulimon. Her attack dissipated harmlessly on the street, leaving only a small black scuff. Hulimon looked over his shoulder and snickered, seeming specifically formulated to be a taunt for the easily-provoked Gelermon.

Sam had no choice but to follow her, but Hulimon darted out of sight in short order. It felt corny as hell to make any comments about his vulpine nature with regards to sneakiness or slyness, but Sam at least _thought it_ as he fished his D-Rive out of his pocket.

He noticed immediately something important: his D-Rive was active.

He hadn't noticed, likely because he had been lost in his own head and zoned out to the music in his earbuds, but there were the two dots he expected to see -- the white pinprick representing Hulimon, immediately preceding the green dot shaped like Gelermon's head, but there was another, moving independently and a short distance away.

 _Liriomon. Ultimate level_.

Fan- _fucking_ -tastic!

"Gelermon!" Sam yelled ahead to Gelermon, who had gotten a fair bit of distance ahead of Sam, but had made no progress on catching Hulimon, "there's an emergent up ahead!"  
He wasn't entirely sure she heard him. He realized, dimly, it wouldn't matter; they were on a collision course with it.

As his pursuit of Gelermon pursuing Hulimon took him down a side-street cutting towards Liriomon's projected path, Sam dimly wondered where Hulimon's partner was. No sooner than he had that thought, he that he saw the ponytailed young man, looking almost blasé as he leaned against a car parked on the side of the street, looking down at his D-Rive.

Hulimon darted behind Eli, and Gelermon skidded to a stop, growling and looking like she was _this_ close to seeing if she could attack Hulimon without risking hurting his human partner, and how much she would consider acceptable collateral.

Eli looked up and raised a hand in greeting, what felt like a few seconds too late.

Sam wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. He was about to ask what the _fresh fuck_ was going on, but he glanced into the distance and saw a blurry blue shape leap from rooftop to rooftop some distance away, and he sighed through his nose, and decided to say nothing.

Gelermon, however, stood between Sam and them, the spitting image of a guard dog. She had stayed on all fours, with her pupils constricted and her teeth bared, and a low growl escaping her throat. Every inch of her body sent a clear warning.

Eli raised an eyebrow, and looked sidelong at Hulimon. "What did you do to piss her off so bad?" he said with vague amusement and little to no apparent urgency.

"Hey, I didn't actually _do_ anything," Hulimon said, shrugging and looking over at Gelermon. "I wasn't even trying to start a fight. I was being good and shit."

"If you didn't want a fight, then why did you attack him?" Gelermon snapped back, already preparing to fire off another attack if Hulimon drew any closer.

Hulimon did not, thankfully; he put his paws up in a _whoa there_ motion, even setting down his bag on the ground in order to do so with both hands.

"Well, I didn't really _attack him_. Just kind of attacked _near him,_ " he said, and the irony dripping from his voice made it clear that he knew he was arguing semantics. "More importantly, I figured it'd get your attention," he said, picking his bag up and hoisting it over his shoulder. "I mean, hey, it worked, didn't it?"

Eli sighed and gently nudged him with the side of his foot. "You're going to get yourself in trouble one of these days," he said, and Hulimon snickered.  
Gelermon only barely relaxed, though she pointedly stood her ground.

"Are we going to deal with that, or what?" Sam said with a vague gesture towards the center of downtown, a bit more brusquely than he maybe meant it to come out, but fuck it, too late now.

Eli looked where Sam was gesturing. He nodded and gave him a thumbs-up; this was followed by a gesture at Hulimon to follow as he took off, whether the fox was coming or not.  
Gelermon glared daggers at Hulimon; Hulimon snickered with a shrug, and bounded after Eli. Gelermon was quick to follow, not wanting to be left behind, and Sam followed after his own partner a moment later.

 

***

Lily had surreptitiously stepped out onto her balcony when she had heard a couple loud noises outside of her apartment. Call her crazy, but it had definitely sounded like digimon.  
She hadn't been able to move quick enough to really see anything but a very harried-looking, short young man running after a white dog off its leash who was chasing something, as dogs off their leashes were prone to doing.

She wondered if she hadn't been hearing things.

 

***

Sam felt deeply conflicted about this, or at least _confused_ , but he kept his mouth shut. Luckily, Gelermon was providing ample commentary.  
"Stupid smug fox-ass motherfucker," she muttered, just barely too loud to be talking to herself. Hulimon continued his faint laughter every time she spoke, and Sam couldn't say he didn't _understand_ Gelermon's desire to shoot an energy beam into his face, but--

Well, there were other things that more badly needed energy beams to the face, probably.

Liriomon was gaining quite a bit of attention, understandably enough; it wasn't every day that one saw a giant blue sabertooth cat with a mane made of petals and a vine-like tail as long as the rest of its body trailing behind it, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. (At least, you didn't if you were sober.) Some of its jumps were on the inelegant side, and the buildings weren't all even heights; this didn't seem to bother it, and it scratched and scrabbled and pulled at the edges of buildings until it could heave itself up and resume its prowl.

The problem -- aside from _it being a giant cat jumping from building to building_ \-- was that each swipe of its golden claws tore through brick and concrete like sponge cake, sending rubble tumbling down onto the street and leaving a clear path to follow.

As they drew closer, both Gelermon and Hulimon decided to get a head start.

"Gelermon, drive evolve to... Frekimon!"

"Huimon, drive evolve to... Hokkaimon!"

Green and cyan light faded away to leave dog and fox replaced with wolf and slightly more humanoid fox, and they rushed forward, leaving their human partners a little bit in the dust. It was hard not to feel like Frekimon was trying to race Hokkaimon, and Hokkaimon seemed more than happy to oblige her.

"She's definitely competitive, isn't she," Eli remarked out loud, falling back so that he was closer to Sam; Sam physically felt his lips press together with the sheer force of how hard he was clamming up.  
Eli seemed to notice this and glanced sidelong at him-- and then didn't press the issue, saying nothing further.

People were already stopping to rubberneck and peer. What traffic there was coming to a stop-- that which hadn't stopped at sight of Liriomon did so when Frekimon and Hokkaimon came running onto the scene. The distance rang with distant police sirens, for all the good the police had done in _any_ of these incidents.

(Sam found himself wondering, vaguely, if they had reconsidered their use of helicopters in dealing with digimon emergences, after Draugmon had made such short work of one.)

Liriomon was drawing closer and closer; Frekimon glanced up at the rooftops and made a quick decision.

"I'll get it's attention," she said simply, having to make an educated guess the path that Liriomon would take as it leapt from building to building.

"Hey, look at you, stealing my ideas," Hokkaimon said with a smirk ( _when was he not smirking_ ), procuring a staff from his bag that seemed too long to have fit. "You think you're up to it?"

" _Watch me,_ " Frekimon said in a low growl, flexing her claws, clearly unamused.  
Liriomon didn't seem interested in anything happening down on the street; if she missed her shot, they'd have to keep chasing it, and the less they had to get involved in a _chase_ , rather than an interception, the better.

"After you," Hokkaimon said with a dramatic flourish of his staff; Frekimon was not amused.

Her snap guess about Liriomon's trajectory had been right; it was preparing to leap from one building across the street to another, and so--  
"New Moon Fire!" Frekimon yelled, gathering up a green orb of fire and spitting it. She timed her attack just right so that it smashed into Liriomon's stomach as the cat leapt overhead, and the impact at least got its attention, even if it didn't seem to do much in the way of hurting it.

Liriomon dug its claws into the solid brick wall of the building it had been leaping at and snapped its head around, looking to see what had attacked it, and its eyes settled on Frekimon and Hokkaimon in no time. It leapt off of the building and onto the street, and they truly got a sense for how big Liriomon really was.  
Spoilers: it had seemed smaller when it wasn't right in front of them.

With two-foot long golden saber teeth and deep blue fur, marked with lighter-blue stripes and green accents, it was hard to deny that Liriomon was a very aesthetically pleasing digimon. Aesthetics, however, only accounted for so much when they belonged to an enormous feral feline who may or may not mean you harm, and had definitely done a number of public property already.

As Sam and Eli stood just barely back from their digimon, Sam couldn't help but feel like there were a whole fucking lot of rubberneckers and onlookers sticking too close to comfort.  
(What? _They_ were allowed to be this close.)

"Hey there, big kitty," Hokkaimon said, "we got a problem here?"

Liriomon only snarled in response, yellow eyes wild with pupils constricted, so apparently, talking was really not on the menu.  
That worked just fine for Frekimon.

"Ravenous Hunter!" the wolf yelled, her paws igniting with green fire as she leapt towards Liriomon. Liriomon, in turn, pounced at Frekimon.

Frekimon did not win this altercation. Even without the difference in their levels, Liriomon was simply _much larger_ than Frekimon, and was able to pin her down easily.  
The mane of petals around Liriomon's neck spread out like a flower opening to the sun, and Liriomon opened its mouth wide. A swirling cloud of what looked like golden pollen gathered around its mouth. Frekimon gagged at the sickly-ripe scent that it brought, bringing to mind a heavily perfumed pile of rotting vegetation.

"Fox Staff!"  
Hokkaimon didn't seem to want to be left out and he, too, rushed forward, the bo staff that he had pulled out of his bag primed and ready to strike out at Liriomon. He smacked the sabertooth square in the face, drawing its attention away; it snarled, lifting a paw off of Frekimon to swipe at Hokkaimon, which was enough for Frekimon to wrench her way out, scrambling a bit inelegantly and awkwardly, but there were more important things than looking good. Hokkaimon leapt back as well, getting out of melee range as quick as he could.

Both Frekimon and Hokkaimon had to shake their heads, feeling a drowsy fog around their heads that they could only chalk up to the effects of Liriomon's pollen.

Liriomon, though, took advantage of this few seconds where they had to re-align themselves. "Kudzu Frenzy!" it roared, and for a second, nothing happened. It was clear why a moment later, as the concrete began to buckle. Thick, thorny, very enthusiastically animated vines forced their way out of the street, lashing wildly. They were strong enough to pierce through parked cars as they burst out of the ground, but they were most concerned with anything _moving_.

That extended to not just Frekimon and Hokkaimon, but Eli and Sam standing back-- and the onlookers who hadn't gotten the fuck out of the way. The street filled up with screams of panic and confusion as thorny vines began to lash out, attempting to grab a hold of anything with a pulse.

Before Sam even had a moment to panic, Frekimon lunged for him, her claws glowing green as she sliced through the vines that had burst up close to the two D-Rive holders.  
Onlookers cried out again.

"It's attacking them!" a woman screamed, and Frekimon felt a sudden spike of _fury_ as those words stuck out to her.

"I'll deal with the vines terrorizing _the gentle populace_ ," Hokkaimon said quickly, calling over to Frekimon over the noise, "you keep the kitty _occupado_."

Frekimon turned her attention to Liriomon again; the sabertooth was advancing on her, so anything she wanted to do was curtailed by her need to keep Liriomon from doing anything worse than it was already doing.

She gritted her teeth as she dropped onto all fours, digging her claws into the cracking concrete. She didn't know why she had expected any different-- between Hulimon's entire personality and now this...  
The idea of Hokkaimon bailing her out _offended her_ in a way she wasn't quite prepared for, but the reaction from the onlookers was a thousand times worse. It was only one moment in isolation, but-- _there were more important things_. She snarled, shaking her head to dispel those thoughts; she didn't need anyone's help-- not Hokkaimon, not any of their little _group_. Nobody but her and Sam. Not if people were going to be switching sides and playing at being allies so soon after being out for their heads; not if people were going to just read her as a threat no matter what the situation was.

(Of course, she hadn't been prepared to help the others at all, so was it really that much better--)

Well.

With all these thoughts, it shouldn't come as any surprise that a green light started to creep up Frekimon's paws and tail.  
She began to growl, low and deep, her teeth bared, but it was lost underneath the screech of Sam's D-Rive.

She hated that damn noise, and she reared her head back as the green light and blackness consumed her, her eyes flooding with green as she began to howl. The howl began to shift, staticky and heinously loud-- in fact, it seemed to be growing louder, as if she were trying to drown out the D-Rive's glitchy squeal. Even so, just as every time before, within moments it was impossible to tell the two sounds apart, and the inevitable began to happen.

 

"Frekimon, catalyst evolve to--!"

The glitching orb of black and green spread around Frekimon, shaking and shifting and barely seeming to contain Frekimon's changing shape within as it grew in size. The orb quickly split apart-- not of its own accord, but with a swipe of a massive metal-clawed paw.

The digimon left behind as the dark light dissipated was a massive, hulking, and bulky quadrupedal beast that was canine only in the broad strokes. A metallic black mask covered the top half of her face, and from the crown of her head running down between her shoulderblades was a mane made of putrid green fire. Canine skulls decorated her shoulders, with pinpricks of light darting this way and that in their eye sockets. These matched her actual eyes -- which had a feral and wild, almost crazed, look to them -- in colour: vivid, acidic yellow.

Her front paws were covered by metal gauntlets that granted her enormous dark-silver claws, while metal cuffs settled around both her wrists and ankles. Metal ridges emerged from the base of her spine, just past what looked like steam vents that ripped open near her ribs. Her underbelly was bare of fur and instead plated with green-grey scales, which also covered her now almost draconic tail.

She reared up and slammed her claws into the ground, wrenching open her mouth with the metallic screech of rusted joints trying to move again, and released a cloud of green-black smoke. The stench of burning flesh and sulfur filled the street with a blast of scorchingly hot air.

"Grimmon!"

 

Somehow, some way, this didn't seem to still the public's panic. In fact, her new shape only seemed to inspire more fear and outcry as a relatively managable eight-foot-tall bipedal wolf was replaced with a fourteen-foot-tall metal-masked hellbeast.

Go figure.

Grimmon roared and the sound was almost metallic-sounding, and she didn't hesitate before leaping at Liriomon, who, at least, she was closer to in size now.

"Thorn Spear!"  
Liriomon lunged to meet Grimmon, rearing one massive claw back. As it pulled it back, thorny vines sprung into existence, wrapping around its forearm. Once it was completely engulfed by it, the thorns shot out until they were over a foot long each, turning Liriomon's paw into a makeshift mace. It struck out at Grimmon, slashing out across her chest and digging deep wounds.  
The wounds didn't bleed, but they began to smoke, letting off a faint green cloud.

"Hellfire!" Grimmon cried, and the fire on the back of her head and neck flared up-- and continued to flare up until it had engulfed her entire front half. Her black metal mask stood out in the flames-- it would have been _badass_ if it weren't a wee bit terrifying.  
She threw herself at Liriomon, making a deliberate and clear effort to get as much contact between Liriomon and the fire as she could, and the two of them skidded backwards into one of the cars that had already been destroyed by Liriomon's vines.

"Hey, watch it!" Hokkaimon snapped from where he was dispelling the last of the vines that had sprung up; people still reacted to him with fear and uncertainty, but his smaller size (and, now, much less horrifying appearance) was a boon.

Hokkaimon's words went unheeded. As the fire surrounding Grimmon's front half died down, Liriomon now found itself being pinned by Grimmon, a reversal of mere moments ago that was hard not to notice. No small amount of Liriomon's flesh had been badly burned, and the blackened fur and petals were still emitting a faint green smoke.  
People scattered, trying to get as much distance between themselves and the pair of fighting digimon as they could. Grimmon snarled, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was very, very close to a building as the fire on her back began to build up again.

Or maybe she just didn't care.

Sam stood still, his mind spiralling as he thought of every possible way he could have avoided this. As lame as it felt to say (or, at least, think), he should totally have just stayed home today.  
Part of the plan that he had told Gelermon about yesterday was that he wanted to test something-- he wanted to test how catalyst evolution worked, and how to put an end to it.

And now that he had gotten the chance to test it, his mind was a total blank.

"Hey!" Eli yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth; his voice shook Sam out of his thoughts for a few spare seconds, and it was long enough for Sam to realize that Eli was talking to Hokkaimon, not him. "Now may be a good time!"

"Thought you'd never ask," the fox said. The staff in Hokkaimon's hands disappeared in a puff of white-blue smoke as the D-Rive in Eli's began to glow blindingly bright.

Cyan circuitry ran up Hokkamon's limbs and tail, and in a moment he was engulfed by a sphere of bright white and cyan-- you should know the drill by now.

 

"Hokkaimon, conduction evolve to--!"

The sphere of white and cyan looked not unlike the digimon in question's own magical attacks as it burst into motes of light to reveal his new form.

Eight feet tall at the shoulder, Hulimon's new form still had his most recognizable feature-- his noh-mask like face, burst into a wide grin, now decorated with slightly changed red markings and the addition of bright blue ones. A braided blue rope sat tied around his midsection, and a matching collar-like rope rested around his neck, with a large shiny red jewel at the front like a dog-tag. This collar sat in a fluffy mane of cream-coloured fur that sat around his neck now. His paws were cyan, like he had dipped his feet in paint, and his forelegs were covered in the same pale colour as his new mane, with silver rings encircling his forearms.

Only acknowledging his forelegs here is not a mistake; after the waist, his body dissolved into a swirling blue and white smoke. Seven fox tails, each one fading from orange to cream before being tipped in blue, fanned out behind him. In his teeth he gripped his bag, which was identical to the way it had been in his previous forms -- a plain burlap-like sack, emblazoned with a red kanji character -- only larger to match his new size.

"Yokaimon!" he said, his voice sounding like a cackling laugh even as he announced his name.

 

(If it was any consolation, the onlookers were just as troubled by Yokaimon as any other digimon. One supposed when one wasn't used to giant monsters, that was a reasonable response.)

"Moon Claw!" Yokaimon said, his paws beginning to glow blue-- and then he vanished Or at least, almost vanished; a sharp eye would see a faint trail of blueish smoke that darted towards Grimmon and Liriomon. In a puff of that same smoke, Yokaimon reappeared between the two entangled digimon and the building they were far too close to, and he swiped with his glowing paws in a one-two motion.

Grimmon attempted to wrench away from Yokaimon's attack, and Liriomon was already attempting to pull away, so this led to a domino effect of the digimon being dislodged from each other. Grimmon's claws scraped against the street as she skidded away, while Liriomon righted itself quickly.

"Thorn Spear!" the sabertooth roared as soon as it was back on its feet. It rushed at Yokaimon, its paw engulfed by thorny vines once more; Yokaimon in turn vanished, albeit a little less quickly than he had last time, and with a larger puff of blue smoke left behind. Liriomon stumbled to a stop, looking around for the fox it had been attempting to attack.

"Luna Wave!"  
Yokaimon's voice preceded him, and he reappeared in another flurry of sweet-smelling smoke. The moment he was visible, he dropped his bag to the ground; he drew what seemed to be a drawstring on it, and from within the bag a concussive beam shot forth, aimed directly at Liriomon.

The sabertooth snarled, pushed back by the attack, and it opened its mouth. "Kudzu--!"

"Black Metal!" Grimmon roared as she rushed at Liriomon, her claws turning pitch-black and razor-sharp. She slashed across Liriomon's body, leaving massively deep tears. She smashed into the ground, cracking the street (because it really needed more damage to be done). In her wake, Liriomon began to shift and pixellate, and burst into data before it could finish calling its attack.

This still left one big problem.

"Hellfire!" Grimmon said, unable to prevent herself from -- just like every other refugee digimon -- throwing herself at the nearest target. For the third time, Yokaimon puffed into smoke, and he reappeared only a couple seconds later.

"Hey, hey, watch it, I can't keep this up," the fox said, even though his grin never faltered. Grimmon skidded to a stop as the green flames faded from her body, and she snarled.

Unfortunately, Grimmon very well could keep it up; she lunged at Yokaimon and wrenched her mouth open with that horrible metal-scraping sound. She snapped her jaws shut like they were spring-loaded, attempting to grab a couple of the fox's tails, but he was too quick.

"Luna Wave!" Yokaimon yelled as he sprang backwards and over Grimmon's back. He drew the drawstring on his bag in midair, the beam of light hitting the dog as he arced over her.

"Black Metal!" Grimmon snarled, her claws turning black once more as she slashed at Hokkaimon's underbelly. It was only by a well-timed vanishing into a puff of smoke that he avoided his abdomen being torn to ribbons, and he was breathing a bit heavily when he reappeared. Vanishing into smoke, it seemed, took quite a bit out of him the more he did it.

"So," Eli said, looking over at Sam. "You got a contingency plan for this?"  
Sam blinked, taking a moment to realize he was being spoken to, not helped by Eli's tone of voice-- he spoke very plainly, almost like he was just thinking out loud.

Sam pressed his mouth shut, not exactly wanting to admit that he hadn't thought this far ahead.  
(He was wondering if Eli wasn't _calm_ so much as just _unemotional_ ; he was about to ask how the hell Eli wasn't _freaking the fuck out_ , until he realize that he, himself, was only freaking out on the inside.)

"Not really," Sam said, finding his voice a bit apprehensively, "I haven't exactly figured out yet what the actual process _is_ to bring them back down to normal."

Eli nodded once, watching the two digimon in front of them-- Yokaimon was trying to avoid engaging directly with Grimmon, apparently having decided that she would likely beat him in melee combat, but he only had so many options that wouldn't lead to her to crash into things. She wasn't particularly troubled by the idea of destroying things, and in fact she seemed quite single-mindedly fixated on _wrecking Yokaimon's shit_.  
"If you don't come up with something quick, I'm going to tell Yokaimon to go ahead and try to beat her into de-digivolving," Eli said, fishing his D-Rive out of his pocket and turning it over in his hand. "Nothing personal, just, you know."

"Right," Sam said, his mouth going dry.

He racked his brain. His thoughts were already running at a thousand miles per minute, iterating on solutions (and, in great part, worst-case scenarios).  
All of the others, so far, had been stopped by interference by their human partners to some degree-- whether it had been Natalie's calling to IlDoctorimon until she reached him, Xander decking Camazmon, Peter re-wrapping Onryomon's face, or Meghan standing resolute in front of Cabramon, they had all returned to normal after being intercepted by their humans.  
But what on earth could he do here? What could he do to drag stubborn, feral, always-ready-for-a-fight-even-when-she-wasn't-abloodyhoo-crazy Gelermon out of the fight?

He tried to ignore the vague grip of ensuing panic somewhere in his chest. He glanced, a bit frantically, to the side and looked at Eli.  
...

"If I die, tell everyone I died doing something cooler and way less stupid than what I'm about to do," he said, and Eli said nothing, merely raised both eyebrows. Sam steeled himself and bolted forward. Yokaimon had just leapt towards where they stood in watching, while Grimmon had gone skidding in the other direction.

"Attack me," Sam said quickly as he ran up to Yokaimon's side. Beat. "Pretend to attack me. Don't actually attack me, I'd fucking die."

"Are you kidding me?" Yokaimon said, glancing sidelong at Sam. The fox looked a bit haggard and harried; he was obviously getting a bit tired, since he couldn't bite the bullet to truly end this fight. "She'd--" A moment of clear realization crossed the fox's face, and his grin grew wide. "I get you," he said, and he nodded. Grimmon got to her feet and snarled, preparing to close the distance between her and Yokaimon when she noticed Sam standing next to the fox, and she stayed her hand, so to speak.

"Moon Claw!" Yokaimon said, loud and clear, lifting his paw deliberately above Sam's head. For not the first time today, Hulimon was blatantly baiting Gelermon.

And just like last time, it worked. Even with as obviously as Yokaimon wasn't going to actually follow through, it seemed to do the trick. Grimmon straight up _pounced_ , practically leaving an impact crater mere feet in front of Sam; the sheer force of it caused Sam's legs to be knocked out from under him and he fell on his ass, throwing his arms up to protect himself.  
Yokaimon grit his teeth and waited for the exact last moment to vanish in a puff of smoke and reappeared behind Grimmon a moment later; he had been able to stay invisible for less and less time every time he had done it, and he looked a bit haggard and harried now.

Grimmon, though, did not move; her metal-masked face was close to Sam, and he lowered his arms slowly. The eyes on her face and the pinprick lights in the skulls on her shoulders were focused on him, and the ferality was fading out of her eyes fast. Even the vague threat of Sam getting hurt had seemed to do the trick.

Sam prepared his D-Rive, digging it out of his pocket in a hurry. For a split second, Grimmon's form was replaced with a different one before she began to shrink back down to an unconscious Gelermon. By the time she returned to her normal form, Sam was at the ready to minimize her, and nobody who was still stupid enough to be an onlooker was any the wiser.

Yokaimon huffed and stretched out his tails as he began to glow cyan in turn, and Eli followed suit in minimizing Hulimon before anyone could get a good look at where the fox monster had gone.

"Fucking hell," Sam muttered, suddenly feeling a lot sorer and more exhausted than he had felt a moment ago.

"Pretty clever, though," Eli said as he walked up, offering a hand to help Sam up. Sam looked at it and shook his head once, pushing himself up under his own power and dusting himself off. Eli didn't seem too offended, shrugging nonchalantly and putting his hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

They ducked through the same sidestreets to get out of the line of fire (and attention) as quickly as they could, and it was hard for Sam not to feel like they were fleeing the scene of a crime.  
... they kind of were, but, you know, shut up.

They had to go in different directions, so Sam realized he only had limited time to ask anything he wanted to ask before they parted ways.  
"What's with the change of heart?" Sam said as they turned into an extremely narrow alley.

"Hm?"

"Couple weeks ago, I was pretty sure you and your buddies had a beef with us," Sam said. "At least according to what Flopsy the delusional rabbit had to say about the situation. But as of late you've been turning tail and running when you have the chance to take us out."

Eli paused and looked over his shoulder. "There's a lot of sides to the story, you know?" he said vaguely, gesturing with one hand. "Lot of factors. Things change, at least temporarily."

 _Very specific,_ Sam thought bitterly, frowning.

Eli stopped, and Sam nearly ran into him. "Also, just gotta say-- just because you don't like Shitomon, it doesn't necessarily mean she's spouting bullshit, you know. Might do you good to stop calling her-- what was it? Flopsy the delusional rabbit?"

Sam said nothing, merely stuffed his hands in his pocket.

Eli shrugged. "S'not really any skin off my back, though. Just saying, food for thought." They reached the end of the alleyway, and he gestured in one direction with his thumb. "I'm goin' off this way. Hope your friend feels better when she comes to," he said.

He raised a hand in vague goodbye, and Sam stiffly lifted a hand in response. As he watched Eli's back retreat, he couldn't help feeling that really should have stayed home today.  
He wasn't looking forward to looking over this footage and the conversations that would inevitably surround it.


	20. Episode 20: All My Best Friends are Metalheads

The wind howled across a grey and broken landscape, dust in the sky turning the light from the high-hanging sun a hazy orange-pink. Hundreds of years ago, this land had once teemed with life, but the years had not been kind to it. Even the once-impressive ruins of the temples that had been left behind had been worn down and crumbled down to hollow shadows of their former glory, no longer able to stand even as a reminder.

There were still a sparing handful of digimon who lived out here, but their numbers were few. It was said that the digimon who stayed here had lost themselves; it was hard to tell just how true this was, but the few digimon who _had_ stuck around certainly seemed to have lost something within them. Nobody cared to find out whether the feral digimon were the only ones who could stand to live here, or if living here had sapped that spark from them the way that the land's vitality had been sucked dry.   
Of particular interest was the fact that in the past month, stories had started coming back-- tales of a massive skull-faced beast roaming the wastes, even more savage and feral than its usual denizens, whispered in the hushed whispers of unsubstantiated rumors.

This is not to say that it was wholly devoid of self-aware life; especially as of late, treks into the barrens had become more and more frequent, albeit only by a select and dedicated few who dared to brave it.   
See, it was here -- and only here, out in the canyons and the severed stones-- that the connection between the worlds was the strongest, where the barrier was the weakest-- and thus, where the cracks were forming. It had been where the refugees and their pursuers had escaped fifteen years ago; it made sense that it was here that the connection was starting to be forced back open.

A great many digimon had undertaken the task of journeying out to the cracks in the past few months -- indeed, far more digimon had ventured than _had actually suceeded_. The environment was harsh, and it was far, far away from the last vestiges of civilization. The feral digimon were fierce, and even when the cracks were plentiful, they were irregular, and would open and close without warning.

But as of late, the cracks had been getting more frequent. They were larger; stronger digimon than ever before had been able to make it through the cracks. Even ultimate level digimon had been able to cross over.   
Mostly, anyway; some digimon had bad timing, or chose the wrong crack, and they were still ripped apart as they tried to cross over.

But still, it was more than had been able to before.

Some said it was worthless to try. They said that no digimon had ever come back after crossing over. Moreover, no matter what had become of the digimon who had made the journey... the cracks were still spreading. It might have been too late. They might be marching into certain death for no reason at all. In fact, some digimon wondered if the refugees were even alive at all.

Others held on to the belief that if they _had_ been defeated or otherwise killed, Dinmon would let them know, as he had promised to do those fifteen years ago. These digimon were more optimistic, holding onto the hope that it could be stopped. They took solace in the idea that there was slightest chance of stopping the impending disaster, even if crossing over was paramount to a death sentence. The possibility was enough to make the endeavor worth it.

Some of the more extreme skeptics, though, had resigned to this, and had found themselves venturing out as well. These skeptics journeyed out to the cracks to cross over as well, but not because they dreamed of fixing things. They didn't believe they would be the heroes to save the digital world from destruction; they had merely decided that there _was_ no saving it, and there was nothing to lose by crossing over. Even if they died in the attempt -- and there _were_ those extreme skeptics who assumed that no digimon had actually truly made it to the other side, and that simply making the attempt would prove fatal -- they decided that they would take the risk if it meant the possibility, however slim, of a better life than awaited them here.

Of course, even those digimon who believed might enable them to hunt down the refugees knew that this all came at a cost.   
After all, if the connection was strengthening, then it meant that the thing forcing the connection open was strengthening.

As the cracks increased in frequency, so too did the whispers.

 

***

Natalie couldn't help but feel that the first week of her school year had been going _too well_. Not that it was going super fantastically, but she hadn't run into any major problems yet, and that was enough to put her a bit ill at ease.

The extraordinary events of the summer were an evergreen topic for conversation among the student body, with a joke quickly developing around telling the freshmen and transfer students from out of state that this was normal. ( _Yeah, and every October the pumpkin monster ravages the STEM buildings, didn't they tell you that during orientation?_ )  
Jokes aside, they had gotten a lengthy email about emergency procedure, reinforced by long reassurances that nothing was going to happen to the campus. Natalie couldn't help but feel like that was tempting fate a little bit, but for all her occasional gripes with Northwest, she didn't particularly care for disaster (or digimon) to strike it just yet. Not until she got her bachelors', at least.

Admittedly, it was kind of weird to be out among -- well, not _normal people_ , because she wasn't pretentious enough to think she wasn't normal, but -- people who hadn't spent the entire summer completely consumed by Digimon. People who, as far as she knew, didn't have Digimon.  
(Though, really, as of knowing about Theo, who could say?)

That said, no major digimon emergences had happened since Sunday -- there had been a couple minor ones, but they were all champion levels, and those were getting easier and easier to deal with. (She did, in fact, contemplate more than once how fucking bizarre it was to consider only _certain_ otherworldly monster attacks "major".) While they hadn't been high-profile, it had meant that nobody was quite willing to relax.  
It was kind of a crapshoot whether it was better or worse than the terrible silence when no digimon were appearing.

(Raumon had expressed enjoyment at getting to tag along unseen for Natalie's classes, though. She had occasionally taken him out when he could fit in a backpack as Pestimon, but being minimized was far preferable, even if it was a little hard for him to get used to ignoring it when it seemed like Natalie's classmates were going to walk into him.)

And on top of that, there was still the problem that the chances of her running into Ryan on campus approached _one_ as time went on. Even if they (thankfully) didn't share any classes this term, they were in the same department, which meant they spent a lot of time lurking around the same buildings if nothing else. If their few intersections had been awkward last term, this was going to be whole new tiers of awkward and uncomfortable.  
Maybe, she thought, she should _try_ talking to him. In light of everything that had happened, there was the slight chance that maybe, just maybe, they could at least come to some agreement-- or maybe she'd just make things worse.

(She'd been thinking about it a lot as of late.)

But none of what she'd worried about -- neither digimon nor ex-boyfriend drama -- had come to pass yet, and she was feeling cautiously optimistic.

She was waiting for her coffee at the Lotus -- which, as she had totally expected, was packed to the gills. It was the first Friday afternoon since the term had started, so anyone who wasn't expecting a wait was a fool. Peter wasn't working just now, so she didn't feel _too_ bad about coming in. If he had been on, she might have reconsidered.

_you should totally come, tho!_

Meghan was messaging her in a one-on-one conversation; tomorrow night, Xander's band was playing a gig, and Meghan had taken it upon herself to invite the rest of the group. She had had absolutely zero faith that either Peter or Sam would come, each for their own distinct but obvious reasons, and so she was focusing her foremost efforts on Natalie.

 _i dunno, i don't know if i'd really fit in, you know?_ Natalie sent back. She wouldn't -- couldn't, even -- deny that it sounded interesting, but...

_yeah, because you'd totally expect me to, right? : P_

_okay-- point._ Natalie sighed and shifted her weight, biting the inside of her cheek contemplatively. _i'll think about it._

Her _I'll think about it_ was as good as a _count me in_ , and she got the feeling that Meghan knew that, because all she sent back was:  
_> : D_

Despite herself Natalie couldn't help but be entertained. She tucked her phone into her pocket as her name was called by an overworked barista and she gave her rushed thanks before she was displaced by a person who had placed his order thirty seconds ago demanding to know where his drink was.  
She was just about out the door, almost home free, when she only narrowly avoided (literally) running into Ryan on his way in.

Clearly, she had thought too soon when she had expressed her inward relief.

She stumbled a side-step to avoid a collision, and he looked as surprised as she did, eyebrows shooting up and lips pulled back in a grimace. She readjusted the lid on her coffee, distantly thankful that she hadn't spilled it all over herself (because, you know, that would have been the bullshit cherry on top of the sundae). They stood near the door for a good three seconds, and if not for all the other people present there would have been an awkward silence.

"Hi," she said slowly, then quickly shuffled to the side so that they weren't blocking the door.

Ryan followed suit, not wanting to be that much of a douchebag, and then he seemed to find his voice. "Nat-- hi. I've been looking for you all week, I haven't seen you around campus at all."

"Yeah, I've been kind of busy," she said, which wasn't _untrue_ , but there was also a hint of _she had been actively trying to avoid this confrontation_. What was one supposed to say? _Hey, how about that sudden lack of murder attempts? What's up with that?_

"I've been meaning to maybe get a chance to explain what's been going on," Ryan said, turning his palms up.

"No offense," Natalie said, keeping her cool remarkably well, "but the last time you asked to explain yourself it ended with your partner trying to convince me that she should be allowed to go all citizen's arrest-stroke-vigilante murder on mine."

It was a testament to the college student clientele of the Lotus that nobody seemed to bat an eye at this conversation.

Ryan groaned, running a hand backwards through his hair. "Christ, you really hold a grudge, don't you?"

Natalie gaped at him for a second. "I-- correct me if I'm wrong, but are you asking if I'm holding a grudge about _being asked for permission to kill my best friend?_ "

"I just mean--" Ryan said, and she could hear the combatitive tone start to creep into his voice. "... I mean, yeah, when you put it that way it sounds really bad, but that's _not_ the point of what I was trying to talk about. If you could just try not to leap to conclusions for two seconds and _not_ leap down my throat then maybe we wouldn't have to have this conversation--"

Natalie felt her heart start to beat a bit harder in what she felt was the world's lamest flight or fight response. If she had wanted this kind of back and forth, the rhetorical shifting and the blaming and the passive aggression, she'd have just kept dating him, and she could already feel the worse parts of herself start to surface. The parts that wanted to fight, to snip and argue and take the bait. She didn't want to make things worse-- she just wanted to get out of here before it turned into a _scene_.

And so she took a deep breath to steel herself before she said anything else. She tried to take a metaphorical step back, even if she couldn't take a literal one.  
"I'm a little busy right now, though, I've gotta go do-- a thing," she said, even though she didn't-- she just really desperately wanted an out. "If it's really important you can shoot me a message about it, yeah? Every time we've tried to talk in person, it's gone really badly so far."

Ryan folded his arms and exhaled through his nose, but he nodded. "Right. Yeah."

She slipped out of the Lotus and felt her heart just about threatening to pound out of her throat, and immediately regretted asking him to text her about it, because now she was about to spend the entire night -- or however long until he got around to telling her what he wanted to tell her -- having to deal with the creeping dread of being told _we need to talk_ , even if it wasn't in so many words.

 

 

***

When Natalie got back to her family's apartment, it was empty. It was early enough in the afternoon that her sisters were still at school, and her parents were both out of the house. It was almost eerily quiet, and she flopped face-down onto the couch as soon as the door was closed without even setting her messenger bag aside.

Raumon, who had been minimized for the trip up to the door, materialized next to her with his head tilted. "You okay?"

She screamed into one of the couch cushions. She let that muffled sound serve as her answer for all of about five seconds; after that, she lifted her head a moment later and looked over at Raumon.  
"Do you think I'm letting how much I hate Ryan get in the way of me actually, like, doing what's best for everyone?"

"No, because Ryan is the worst," Raumon said decisively-- and almost jarringly immediately, like he had prepared for the eventuality that he would be asked this.

Natalie smiled as she sat up properly. "But really though, I've been thinking about it a lot lately."

Raumon thought for a moment, tapping his beak in thought. "I realize I'm biased, here, because Ryan is -- in fact -- the worst, but I'd say because of your experience with him, you have the right to hold at least a little bit of a grudge. He did wrong by you in a lot of ways and he's yet to actually functionally even _act_ sorry."

"Right," Natalie said, but she frowned. "But-- I don't know. You remember what you told me when we talked about IlDoctorimon, right?"

"What part of it?"

"The part about remembering something. Or rather, I guess, remembering that you had forgotten something, I think is how you put it?" she said, and Raumon nodded. "I guess it's just that-- you don't remember anything before you came here, right? Not except for little bits and pieces. The only people who _claim_ to know what came before are Shitomon, Lurumon, and Hulimon, right?"

"Right," Raumon said slowly, and he folded his arms, thinking. "So-- I think I follow."

See, Raumon had said he couldn't fault Natalie for holding a grudge against Ryan considering her experience with him; wouldn't it be silly, then, to not understand holding a grudge for something potentially much bigger than that? And after all-- it seemed like they were starting to overlook it, however temporarily, and however inscrutiably-- so it was at least a valid thought that maybe she should bury the hatchet long enough to be civil, right?

"Maybe I'm overthinking it," Natalie admitted, but Raumon shook his head, cutting her off.

"No, I think you have a point," Raumon said, hopping up onto the couch beside her, and then he paused, thinking. "I think I want to talk to the others, now that we've all had the chance to catalyst evolve. Maybe we'll be able to put some pieces together without having to rely just on Shitomon and company's telling of events."

Natalie nodded, checking her phone as she flopped onto her side in the direction that Raumon wasn't.  
Ryan had not gotten back to her with this apparently very important discussion he wanted to have (and as it would turn out, he wouldn't for the rest of the night).

Natalie tried not to be too _thoroughly unsurprised_ , and she began contemplating how best to coordinate this.

 

 

***

"Whatever you end up saying, she's just going to get defensive about it anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it," Shitomon said, shrugging. Ryan had written and re-written a message fifteen times in the past day, trying to figure out how best to articulate it in a way such that Natalie wouldn't flip out at him for it.

"Yeah, but if I wait too much longer I'm just going to make things worse," Ryan said, running a hand backwards through his hair. "I'm kind of in a catch-22 here."  
He groaned, leaning back in his computer chair. "I don't fucking get women."

"I suppose that works out for everyone involved," Shitomon ribbed, and Ryan snorted, rolling his eyes.

"No, but really, fucked if I know how I'm supposed to do this. How are you supposed to say _hey, I know you hate me, and n-g-l I get it, but there's more important shit than that and hey maybe we can work together so hey how's about it let's bury the hatchet and fight monsters_?"  
(Perhaps it hadn't occurred to him that the best solution would be to, you know, lead with an apology, and go from there.)

"If you find a good way to say that," Shitomon said, "do make sure to tell me."

Shitomon had been pretty deeply troubled lately, and it wasn't hard to see why.  
It wasn't often when you had to set aside what you had thought was your life mission for fifteen years and, teeth clenched, make the decision to work together to fix a problem with the very digimon directly responsible for that problem, but here she was, still on the fence but having few other options to take.

Her thinking was if she could set _that_ aside, then Natalie should be able to set aside her problems with Ryan, since it was obviously much less of a problem.

(Similar conclusions, different paths.)

 

 

***

"We're going with that one, then?"

"You got a problem with it?"

"Nah, I just like how it's so _patently obviously_ a result of your complete inability to express any emotion like a real human being," Will said around a cigarette. He and Xander sat on his -- that is, Will's -- apartment balcony, strewn across plastic lawn chairs as they went over tomorrow night's finalized set list. The sun was going down, and this meant the mosquitos were out in full force, but Will's upstairs neighbors were being annoying again, so they had chosen to make some sacrifices.

"Show me where I asked for your input," Xander said gruffly.

"The part where you won't go ahead with the set list unless he agrees," Desmon provided with a shit-eating grin. She sat just inside the sliding glass doors, not _quite_ wanting to risk being seen from the ground in the current social climate, but not willing to be left out of the conversation.

"I'm down," Will said, handing the more-than-slightly-crumpled piece of paper back to Xander. It was scrawled over, with additions and revisions and rearrangements made in three different colours of ink. "I'm just saying, it's true."

"Fuck off."

"And _that's_ you saying, _god, you're so right, Will, I'm glad you understand me so well_."

"I'm taking the last slice of pizza for that, you prick."

"Bad news about that, actually," Desmon said, her mouth full.

Of pizza.

"The ultimate point is that he doesn't get it, so I'll allow it," Xander said, sitting back on the shitty lawn chair and folding his hands behind his head, allowing the ambient noise of moths flying into the bug zapper and being electrocuted to wash over him.  
So for a minute, he didn't realize that his phone was buzzing with messages.

He vaguely registered that Will was saying something, but he wasn't even remotely paying attention.

He flicked through the messages that had already rolled in by the time he opened his phone-- Natalie was asking if he was free tomorrow afternoon before the gig. He hadn't told her about it, so he took a wild guess and figured Meg had told her; fine, sure, whatever.  
Something something asking if he could stop by because bird boy wanted the chance to talk to Desmon, Peter had already agreed to be there but Xander had no obligation to actually stick around since it was really more for the digimon's benefit, something something blah blah.

He glanced in the general direction of where Natalie lived, short shot from Will's place that it was, and he considered.

 _yeah sure w/e_ he fired back to Natalie. "Anyway, the fuck you say?" he said out loud, looking up at his bandmate.

"I said, how's the monster hunting business going?" Will said, tapping the ash off of his cigarette.

"How the fuck'd you know that was what I was talking about?" Xander said slowly, raising an eyebrow.

"What other people do you talk to except for us?" Will said matter-of-factly, grinning. "If it's not one of us, it's those people with monsters, and you've never replied to Paul or Eric that quickly in your life, so I'm guessing it's the former?"

"Why, he's become a regular social butterfly," Desmon said in a lilting voice, grinning; Xander rolled his eyes.

 

 

***

The next day rolled around. Natalie's family had agreed to vacate the apartment for the afternoon, since she correctly assumed they wouldn't want to deal with eight strangers (four humans and four digimon) in their living room, and as long as the group didn't leave a mess, they could care less what Natalie did.

"I didn't really want to risk meeting up somewhere like a park," Natalie said a bit apologetically as she opened the door for Sam, who was the last to arrive. "Anymore, I figure we might draw a bit too much attention, you know?"

"And that's even _if_ we didn't get into another fight," Peter said, adjusting his glasses. He was seated at the far end of the couch, with Banmon curled up next to him and trying to take up as little space as she could without physically phasing into the couch.

"Nah, I thought we were the picture of subtlety," Xander said, putting his hands behind his head. He was sitting on the opposite end of the couch from Peter; they had at least apparently come to _some_ kind of truce, though it said something unflattering that _wiling to sit on the same piece of furniture_ counted as progress.

Meghan was seated in the middle of the couch, with Oremon sitting on the floor immediately in front of her; it was possible that her acting as a wall, a veritable barrier of positivity, was part of the fact that Peter and Xander weren't sniping at each other.

"Suits me fine," Sam said; Gelermon appeared next to him as soon as the door clicked shut, keeping close to Sam. He looked around and shrugged, taking a seat cross-legged on the floor. Natalie did the same as she walked back over from the door.

"Gentlemen, I've gathered you here for a reason," Raumon said, unable to help himself as he took a seat, forming a slightly misshapen circle.

"If you say 'to kill the batman', we're gonna have a problem," Desmon said from where she perched on the couch behind Xander's head.  
Almost everyone present looked frankly disgusted at that joke. Desmon _grinned_. (Banmon whispered something about _I don't get it..._ and Peter gently placed a hand on her hooded head.)

"To prevent _that_ from happening again," Raumon said, looking at Desmon, who continued beaming, "I guess I'll cut straight to the chase. Do any of you remember anything now that you didn't remember before?"

Well, it really was cutting straight to the point; there was a heavy pause. It already felt like Desmon's bad joke was ages away, just from how rapidly the mood in the room shifted. They had all known why they were being asked to come and talk to Raumon -- Natalie hadn't wanted to mislead them, after all -- but still.  
To almost everyone's surprise, it was Banmon who broke the silence.

"I think I do," she said, raising one cloth-like hand apprehensively, and eyes were on her. She took a moment to gather her thoughts before she spoke again. "I don't know for sure, but..." she trailed off, and tilted her head. "More so since... I catalyst evolved. I feel like I'm starting to remember things more."

"Same here," Gelermon said after a moment.

"Yeah!" Desmon said, nodding. "Though I can't say I'm about to be writing any memoirs anytime soon."

Oremon snorted through his nose and nodded, and that was going to serve as his _me, too_.

Raumon took all of this and he thought hard for a moment, and he nodded-- and then he decided to break the ice. "When I catalyst digivolved," he said, "I remember remembering the feeling of something. A really powerful, very specific feeling-- like a memory of failing to do something I was supposed to do."

"No, but I get that," Desmon said, nodding vigorously. "I mean-- for me it was more like, the cosmic kind of _fuck it_ , but no, I got the same thing!"

Each of the digimon in turn shared their own experience of that feeling right before they had digivolved into their feral, chaotic forms. For Banmon, it had been a sense of resignation; for Oremon, a deep sense of guilt; for Gelermon, a persecuted kind of fury. Each of them had felt that one emotion coursing through them; each of them had shared Raumon's experience of not feeling like they were in control of themselves, as though they were watching themselves from the outside as they had gone berserk.

From the humans' perspective, it was a very, very odd session of comparing notes.

They talked about how ever since that day, when they had had those weird seizures right before Draugmon appeared, they had felt a creeping sense of remembering that they had forgotten things; they talked about how they had been, over the course of the past three and a half weeks (and god, had it only been three and a half weeks?), they had felt bits and pieces creep back into their minds-- nothing enough to make sense of, mostly just the memories of buried feelings.

"That's not a lot to go off of," Sam said, folding his arms and furrowing his brow.

"No, though," Raumon said, shaking his head. "I think it's something."

"You're going to have to back this one up a bit for me, birdy buddy," Desmon said.

Raumon's ear-like feathers twitched as he thought about how to put it. "Those negative feelings, and the power of our ultimate forms, and the way we lost control, and the way that the D-Rives react... I can't say for sure, but I feel like when we catalyst digivolve, it's like... How do I put this? Kind of like an echo of the past?"

 

 

"Ooh, poetic," Desmon said cheekily.

"But you know what I mean, right?" Raumon said, turning his palms up in a pleading gesture.

It took a moment, but Oremon nodded. "I do."

Slowly, the other digimon nodded their agreement as well.

It seemed to becoming clear that everything about their catalyst digivolutions seemed familiar-- and nothing was contradicting the version of events that Shitomon had given them.  
They could digivolve up to ultimate because _something_ had been reawakened in them. Not only was that power awakened in them, but so too were faint memories-- memories of pain and hurt and guilt and violence, of being out of control, of causing pain and hurt in those around them. The more they talked about how each of them had felt, the more they felt sure of it, as if the words themselves were pulling more memories out of the buried depths-- or maybe it was just that they only so rarely had the chance to all be around one another.

"So is that it, then?" Gelermon said. "They're right, we're dangerous, and we should just lay down and die or whatever the fuck. Either we're making things worse or we've already made things worse so why bother?"

"Thanks for staying optimistic," Raumon said dryly, shaking his head. Even so, despite her words, Gelermon didn't even remotely seem to _actually_ be resigning to anything, so much as playing devil's advocate. "No, though. I think there's a big part of the equation we're leaving out." All eyes, human and digimon, were on him and he looked a bit flustered when he realized this, but he powered through.  
"I mean there's our partners."

"It's the common thread," Oremon said with a nod.

Raumon felt a sense of relief that Oremon was time and again being the first to agree with him so he didn't feel like a total moron. "I think," he said, emboldened, "that whatever it is that gave them the D-Rives, they were given to them for a reason."

"How do you figure that one?" Desmon prompted, tilting her head.

"I think it's like... why would we need a device that lets us get stronger," Banmon said, "unless we needed to get stronger for a reason?"

"Right!" Raumon said with a nod.

"We still don't know what, exactly, sent them, though," Gelermon pointed out, and the others nodded in agreement.

"But they do seem to be able to, like, do the thing, you know?" Meghan piped up, making vague hand motions.

"You mean they seem to be able to counteract at least part of the corruption," Peter provided.

Meghan nodded enthusiastically. "Right! That!"

"So it makes sense, I think," Natalie reasoned, "that every time one of our digimon has catalyst evolved..."

"They get knocked back into reality by us getting in their way," Xander finished, folding his arms. "So, what, are we just being asked to stand around with the D-Rives on hand?"

"A D-Rive can't punch," Desmon pointed out, and Xander shrugged one shoulder with a nod.

"Fair enough."

Peter hummed. "So... the D-Rive makes them evolve, the corruption makes the evolution go wrong, and in response the D-Rive keeps the corruption under control," he said, "and then the partner brings them back to their senses?"

A murmur of _sounds right_ and _I don't have any better explanations_ went out among the gathered, but one person was remaining conspicuously quiet in all of this.  
Gelermon glanced pointedly at Sam, who was clearly thinking hard to piece things together without saying anything. He hadn't really talked to the group since his incident, and he hadn't shared his theory about Draugmon yet.

"All of this actually brings up a point I've been wanting to make," he said, tapping his fingers on his knee in a kind of nervous fidget. Eyes immediately shifted to him. "Not to interrupt the digimon power hour here, but, you know, since we're here."

"You're free to," Raumon said, gesturing in a _you have the floor_ motion.

Sam sighed through his nose and sat back, leaning on his hands. "When I went out on Monday, before everything went to shit, I was looking for something to back up a total batshit theory I had." He paused for dramatic effect. "Do any of you guys think that Draugmon acts like a digimon who's catalyst evolved?"

"... huh," Peter said slowly.

Sam explained in brief his theory, starting with the non-corrupted video of Draugmon all the way up to finding where the apparent destruction Draugmon had caused stopped in a residential-ish area, and his vague ideas about Ratamon's nebulous involvement in all of this.  
"It's maybe a bit tenuous," he admitted, shrugging, "but it's something I've been thinking about."

"I think it sounds plausible," Banmon piped up. "But-- if it catalyst evolved, then wouldn't that mean...?"

There were a lot of ways to finish that sentence. Wouldn't it mean Draugmon had a partner? Wouldn't it mean there was another person with a D-Rive?

 

 

***

"I know I may as well be asking a couple of brick walls, but you're still welcome to come, too, you know," Meghan said, looking at Peter and Sam.

After about an hour and a half of discussion and conversation and theorizing, Xander had taken off to take care of band-related troubles before the gig, but the other three pairs of guests were in much less of a hurry to get out, and if Natalie was being honest, she didn't _mind_ the company.  
She herself had made the decision to actually go along with Meghan to the concert tonight, if for no other reason than for the novel experience.

"What is it about me that makes you think I want to be around a bunch of loud probably-drunk people," Sam said flatly.

Meghan shrugged with an apologetic smile. "Hey, I didn't want to make you feel like you _had_ to be left out," she said.

Sam paused, before saying, "thanks." Gelermon shot him an almost _bewildered_ look, but didn't comment on it.

"Where did you say it was, exactly?" Peter said, and Meghan's expression was hilariously similar to Gelermon's when she snapped her attention to Peter.

"It's uh--" she paused and gestured, pointing in various directions as she spoke, "it's that place that's down just off Market, on Olive?" She kind of faltered. "Sorry, let me look it up," she said, pulling her phone out to do just that.

Peter nodded once. "I think I know the place you're talking about. I may come." He looked around and saw surprised looks from all eyes that weren't Banmon. "Is it _that_ surprising that I might go to a punk show?"

"Well, yes, that's definitely part of it," Natalie said, "but also, last I checked, you and Xander get along like puppies and wasps."

"Nice imagery," Raumon interjected; Natalie gave him a thumbs-up.

Peter shrugged. "It isn't as though I have to get up close and personal with him to attend a show. Most musicians are dicks anyway. Doesn't mean I stop listening to music."

"He's got a point," Gelermon said with a smirk.

Sam was quiet for a moment, then he exhaled a heavy sigh through his nose. "Well, fuck me, I don't want to be the only one left out of this."

It took a moment to register that this was how he announced his intention to tag along. Meg looked practically ecstatic; Natalie got the feeling, however distantly, that he had kind of been looking for an excuse to agree to come, and she found herself smiling as well.

 

 

***

Apparently, in the past couple of months, Ekko Lokation had actually been getting a fair amount of buzz in the local scene; the group behind them as they trickled in through the doors was having a loud conversation, something about _I'm actually mostly here for the opener, I heard their show back last month was fuckin' killer and I'm pissed I got there late_. This was indeed another opener for a more well-known local band, but, hey, fuck it, considering that months ago they had been desperately trying to get _one_ gig with a band with a sizable local following, this was not a problem.

The venue was small and dimly lit, with every single inch of the walls covered in layers of posters and flyers and posted messages about proper conduct that nobody had ever given two shits about obeying. A few flickering neon signs and half-busted blacklights provided most of the lighting on the floor proper. A sparing number of wobbly tables were sequestered near the back, close to the neon-lit bar. The little party of four had been quick to lay claim to one of the less-in-a-state-of-disrepair tables as a sort of home base. Meghan hadn't brought her camera with her this time, so she was free to hang to the back the entire time, which suited her just fine; furthermore, Sam in particular wanted absolutely nothing to do with being up in the writhing throng of people.

Peter was the only one of them who was of drinking age (being 21 compared to Natalie's 20 and Meghan and Sam's 19) and this had become ample joke fodder while they had waited for the venue to fill up-- and it had, quite impressively.

"You could really up your hipster game," Sam remarked, glancing over at the bar. " _PBR._ The drink of douchebags. You have to make up for the fact that you're not wearing the scarf."

"Please," Peter said, his voice deadpan. He was, indeed, _not_ wearing his scarf, possibly because even he wasn't pretentious enough to wear a hipster scarf to a punk show. "I'd only drink PBR if they took the exact same piss beer, artificially jacked up the price 500%, and called it an organic wheat-based fermentation beverage with antioxidants. Maybe throw a handful of quinoa in there. I'm a self-respecting hipster, come on now, I have to put in more effort than the bare minimum."

"I underestimated how big of a douchebag you were," Sam said, then smirked. "Nice."

"You know, I'm not sure how much he acts like a hipster because he's actually genuinely into hipster shit, and how much he acts like a hipster because it's ironic," Natalie remarked sidelong to Meghan.

"But if it's ironic, isn't that even _more_ hipster?" Meghan pointed out, and Natalie turned her head up and looked, thousand yard stare style, into the middle distance.

"That's potential tiers of irony we were never meant to comprehend."

Further conversation got cut off by the sound of a whole buch of concergoers, in various states of inebriation, getting _hyped the fuck up_ as Ekko Lokation took the stage.

In all the noise and chaos and energy, it would be incredibly easy to miss that a young woman hanging to the back of the venue, kept stealing glances over at their table.

 

 

***

Lily had spent more time than possibly anyone else taking notes on the most minute details of the videos of the first Draugmon attack. She had spent as much time as anyone _could_ spend trying to commit the people who had been with the other digimon to memory. She had pored over every video, every picture, every scrap of information she could, but she never really expected anything to come of it.

When one of her friends -- and 'friend' should really go in airquotes, because she had abandoned her pretty much the moment they got to the venue -- had invited her out to this show, she had agreed. She almost never turned down a concert, after all; there was nothing better to get your mind off whatever was bothering you. Still, she had only come because she was asked to come.

When the band took the stage, she did a double take, thinking that the frontman looked not _unlike_ the guy she had seen with the bat digimon, the last time Draugmon had appeared, but that might not have registered to her. She had only seen the guy with the bat from a distance, after all, and there were plenty of people in the city who might look like him from a distance.

But when she saw, lurking at the back, a table of four people that looked shockingly like the other four people--

Well.

That stretched the limits of deniability a little bit, you know?

But she still couldn't be entirely sure, and she'd rather put her head in a grain thresher than run up like she knew these people.  
...  
But come on, could she really let this possibility go altogether? She wasn't that dumb. She wasn't dumb in general, actually, but she _especially_ wasn't that short-sighted.

Lily would admit that she was kind of zoning out, lost in thoughts as the music washed over her in a veritable tidal wave of fuzzy guitar and pounding drums. She tried not to be a creep, but she found herself glancing over at them more than a couple times. Lily was glad she was sticking to the back, because any further forward and she might be consumed by the all-devouring _psycho pit_ that had formed up front, and she might lose track of the group she was trying to keep an eye on.  
(That... sounded creepier in her head than she had meant it to. Strike all that.)

She watched as one of the girls buried her face -- which was giving her dyed hair a run for its money for which was more pink -- in her hands as the band played... well, she couldn't be sure, but it was what she gathered from context to be a very pointed [song cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aKdC_jyefg). It didn't seem to be embarrassed so much as flustered, and she watched her companions range from grinning with chin resting on the palms of hands (the natural redhead girl) to what looked like gentle ribbing (the guy who hadn't removed his baseball cap) to half-serious shoulder-patting (the blonde guy in glasses).

They didn't quite act like _the best of friends ever_ , but she got the distinct impression of being on the outside looking in. ... which was normal, she realized; whenever she saw groups of friends out having fun, she didn't exactly worry too much about being an outsider, because that was to be expected.

So then the fact that this put a nasty little pit in her stomach was...  
Fascinating.

 

 

***

Ekko Lokation was winding down to the end of their set, though 'winding down' was a pretty bad turn of phrase, as their last song was, if possible, even louder, more raucous, more worthy an entry to _Music to Have a Bar Fight to, Vol. 3_ than any prior. The pounding of feet paired with the amped-up music just about shook the floor.

The final song started to come to a triumphant and very loud close, yelling and applause that threatened to drown out the end of the song, voices raised in a roar over the top of drums and guitar. Xander grinned lopsidedly, running a hand backwards through his hair. He tossed off a salute to the audience.  
He looked like he was about to say something, some kind of last sendoff, but the moment he raised the mic back to his mouth--

The amps released an absolutely deafening blast of fuzz and feedback noise for five ear-splitting seconds, and then the power cut out, casting the entire hall in absolute darkness. Most people reacted with confusion, but it didn't last. The noise had persisted longer than the darkness; in a few seconds, the electricity came back on.

In that time, the grin had fallen off of Xander's face. His brow was furrowed, and he still held the mic up as if to say something. His bandmates cast him confused looks-- he held up a hand, a _hold off just a second_ gesture, looking around the venue to see if the other members of _the squad_ (ugh) had the same thought as he had, and he saw them in short order; they were kind of hard to miss if you were looking for them.

"Shit," Natalie said, as she as well as everyone else at the table began digging for their D-Rives. Everyone else in the venue was looking to each other or had just resumed their cacophanous applause, because things weren't confusing enough as it was.

D͏̶̡͡͏R̵͢͝͠ ̸̷̶͞͡d͘͘͜͟r̵̸a҉̛u̢͢͠͝g̡͏͡m̵͏̢o̶̡̕̕͡n̷̨̛̛ ̴̴͡m͞҉ǫ͏͡͝n͏̵͡ ̶҉͘d҉̸̛r̢͠͠a҉҉͠u̧͏ ̴͟͢ģ̨m̸̵͘o̶̴͟n̛ ̵̡͢a̶̸͟͜u̧͡g̴̢͞m̧͜o̶͟͝n͢ ̧͜͠u̴̸̴͢l҉͢͝t̡̕i҉̷͘m̧͝ ̶ư̕͢l҉̷͟͏t͟͟͟į͟m̸̢͟a̧͞҉t̷̢̕e̷͢͜ ̸̛m̵a̴͢t͠͝͏͝e͟͏͏̡ ҉̵̡͡m̶̶̢͘a̸̶̛t̴͏҉ ͏̷e̵̡̧ ̕͘͜͡l̶҉̵ȩ̶̶̛͜v̧͠

"Oh, _that's_ real nice," Sam said, getting to his feet so fast he nearly knocked over the chair.  
They tried to pull up the radar, but it wasn't working-- it brought up a garbled mess.

Turns out, they didn't really need it just now.

They heard something as loud as a bomb going off; the entire building shook.

"Everyone stay the fuck back!" Xander yelled into the mic, thinking quickly. "For the love of shit, I don't care how drunk you are, whatever's about to happen, _don't do anything stupid!_ Whatever the fuck security tells you to do, do it without being a bitch about it!"  
Meghan, Peter, and Sam were already on their way out; Natalie was hanging back just barely, looking over her shoulder to make sure Xander was coming, and he made the _go, get moving_ gesture with one hand.

"Xander, no offense, but what the fuck is going on--" Eric hissed, but Xander didn't hear him. He was too busy replacing the mic on the stand and, subsequently, taking a running jump off the stage, which was the exact opposite of _don't do anything stupid_. The crowd scattered to make way for him; nobody wanted to get a combat boot to the face on this fine night. The other members of Ekko Lokation were left to do damage control.

The building shook again.

 

 

***

They burst out of the venue and into the street, and the very second they did, it was absolutely, god-awfully cold. Sirens and screams alike sounded more distant than they were, their hearing blown out by the volume of the concert just moments before.  
But just as they didn't need the radar to know that Draugmon was close, nobody needed anything but their eyes to know what was going on.

The air all around them was already frigid, the late-summer night warmth be damned. Massive icicles stuck imposingly out of the front walls of the building they had just emerged from, having been propelled and driven into them by a massive force. Draugmon stood at the center of it all, hunched forward as it reared back on its back legs, its head half-engulfed by a cloud of icy mist that continued to pour out of its jaws--  
And as they emerged, it launched a flurry of icicles. One came to land mere meters away from them, cracking the sidewalk.

It took approximately a half a second for there to be six digimon in the street instead of one.

"We have to get it away from here," Raumon said quickly, looking around frantically as he tried to think of a plan. It looked like Draugmon either hadn't wrecked much on the way here -- which seemed unlikely -- or like it had just emerged very close. That might have explained how the D-Rive's readout was worse than it had been before, but--

"Yeah, you got a plan?" Desmon said, kicking up into the air and flapping her wings to stay aloft. Her eyes were on Draugmon-- and Draugmon seemed to have noticed them, and was turning to look.

"There's no time for that!" Gelermon snapped. "We have to take care of it before shit gets worse than it is!"

"How are we supposed to--?" Banmon said, and her concern hit them like a truck. How were they supposed to fight Draugmon if they couldn't digivolve to ultimate safely?

"We're going to have to make do," Oremon said, gritting his teeth.

 

 

"Oremon, drive evolve to... Ibexmon!"

"Banmon, drive evolve to... Banshemon!"

"Gelermon, drive evolve to... Frekimon!"

"Desmon, drive evolve to... Corymon!"

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

The street lit up as all five digimon grew in size and stature, and immediately took off in disparate directions, none of them wanting to be standing near their partners when Draugmon decided to start getting murder-y.

"How on earth do these motherfuckers," Xander hissed through grit teeth, "always seem to know where to be to _be the biggest pain in the ass_?"

"We're just that lucky, I suppose," Peter said dryly, but he couldn't help but wonder the same thing.

"Dead of Winter," Draugmon rattled, rearing up and smashing its icy claws into the ground below it. It began to pry apart the street, and wide cracks radiated out from the point of impact. From those cracks, humanlike hands blackened by frost emerged, grabbing at everything they could reach-- whether that was the trailing ends of Doctorimon's coat or the ankles of the humans standing nearby, it didn't matter.

One did not easily forget this, and so there was an immediate scramble from the humans to _get the fuck away from these cracks_ \-- especially the huge one headed straight for him. They scattered quickly, as did the digimon (at least, those who weren't Corymon and Banshemon, since they weren't confined to the ground), but people were coming out of the venue to see what was going on.

"Hey!" Natalie yelled, waving her arms wildly. "Get away from it!"  
However, _you_ try being heard over this kind of chaos, by people whose hearing is shot by loud music, and where everyone is confused. A fair number of people coming out of the concert hall and other establishments nearby found themselves being grabbed by the frozen hands, and--

"Black Bloom!"

Doctorimon lunged in close, drawing a black rose out of his sleeve. Taking particular care not to catch any human legs in his path, he wielded the flower like a knife, slashing out at the grabbing hands, severing them. The moment they were separated from the ground they exploded into shards of icy debris. He moved quickly, taking care to not step in any of the cracks himself. Banshemon leapt at the chance to do the same to cover the ground that Doctorimon couldn't, swooping down near ground level and raking out at the frozen appendages with glowing-white claws.  
The fact that they were helping them did not stop people from screaming as the magical plague doctor man and floating skull-masked ghost thing had moved in towards them and appeared to be attacking them, but there were worse things to worry about than public image right now, huh?

Draugmon pulled its claws out of the ground, and the cracks slammed shut with an earth-shaking force. An absolutely sickening crunch was too loud for comfort-- the sound of those frozen hands being pulverized as the ground snapped back together.

This seemed to be a harsh awakening for any onlookers who hadn't already realized that the best option they had was to _not be here right now_. Some took off running; others hurried back into the concert venue, figuring that at least they could put some walls and space between them and this.

"Black Ice," Draugmon hissed, raising one massive hand as icy energy swirled around its claws. Instead of striking at melee range, it slashed through the air, releasing blades of wickedly-cold ice that were dead-set on Doctorimon.

The plague doctor leapt backwards to avoid it, wincing internally as the attack took out a chunk of the road instead, but he'd rather it hit concrete than him. "Black Bloom!" Doctorimon countered, one black attack for another; he swiped this black flower through the air, and a flurry of black petals flew at Draugmon.

This, it seemed, was a signal that nobody knew they had been waiting for.

"Terra Spear!"

"Hurricane Blitz!"

"New Moon Fire!"

"Banshee's Call!"

Windy energy swirled around Corymon as she feinted towards Draugmon, pulling out of a collision course as the sphere of wind continued on past her, smashing into Draugmon's hide; a spear of rock shot out of the ground under Draugmon's feet, and both Frekimon's green fire and Banshemon's white ghosts hit their mark.

And all of this had exactly as much impact as it had had on Draugmon the first time they had fought-- that is to say, none. Any damage done to its bare musculature was nullified as its frozen flesh practically fused back together. Even if its hide was slightly burnt or otherwise marred, it didn't seem to notice it at all, and the attacks only seemed to be taken as a taunt.

"Hypothermia," Draugmon began to hiss, and digimon and humans alike braced themselves, preparing to leap out of the way if they had to.

A young woman who had been fighting the crowds to get out of the venue emerged, stumbling, onto the sidewalk, and she drew all eyes-- including Draugmon's.  
She was tall and remarkably thin in all regards, from an almost waifishly slim build to a narrow face. Her hair -- a dark indigo colour with three distinct sections in the front dyed various shades of blue -- was wild and spiky, and looked like she had cut it herself while only occasionally glancing in the mirror as she did so. Her entire left arm was covered in tattoos; because she wore ripped jeans with fishnets underheath, a cursory glance would say that her right leg seemed to have gotten the same ink treatment.

At least she wasn't running towards Draugmon, but that was only a small blessing.

 

 

"What are you doing!?" Meghan yelled, but she got no answer.

Draugmon's gaze fell on the new girl. Icy fog continued to gather over its head, coalescing slowly into jagged icicles.

"Get out of here!" Natalie yelled, though she had no idea how much good it was going to do. "At least get back inside, it's not safe here!"  
Which, it wasn't safe for them either, but _they_ had a reason to be here, and didn't really have a choice.

As Natalie spoke, the temperature started getting even colder. Frost began to radiate out from under Draugmon's feet, coating the ground in a thick rime, and then within moments, a thick layer of proper ice. It spread and flowed almost like water, filling every crack and scuff in the street, but when it ran out of room it began to creep up the sides of buildings.

In no time at all, doorways were being blocked by feet-thick thick sheets of ice, trapping those who had taken refuge inside where they were. Only by keeping moving were the ground-bound or humans alike able to avoid being frozen in place where they stood, cracking the ice as it began to creep up their lower legs. Frekimon attempted to melt some of it with the fire around her wrists, but it refreezed just as quickly as she could melt it.  
Even Corymon and Banshemon in the air wasn't exempt, as a vicious, freezing wind began to whip around Draugmon, nearly knocking them out of the sky.

"Shit, shit, shit," Sam hissed, looking around. In the space of barely more than a minute, the street had been almost completely coated in ice, and this strange girl was still here, and what the hell were they supposed to do?

"Hypothermia," Draugmon rattled, releasing a rain of icicles on all present, human and digimon alike.


	21. Episode 21: Stop the Noise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this, I have not missed a single update in 2017. GO ME.

Doctorimon collided with the new girl in a full-body check. This was deliberate, as barely half a second after he forced her off to the side, an icicle almost as large as her entire body smashed into the ground where she had been standing. They skidded across the ice; Doctorimon wordlessly made sure she was unharmed, and nodded. Though he said nothing, he seemed to be apologizing. The plague doctor nodded tersely and leapt back away, struggling to keep his footing on the thick ice while also avoiding the massive icicles that now stuck out of every surface like jagged pillars, not even close to melting in the unseasonably frigid air surrounding Draugmon.

Natalie practically swooped in where Doctorimon had bounded off, stumbling a little as she slid over. "Are you alright? Sorry, he's not much of a talker like this, but I promise he's on the good si--"

"Hypothermia..."

" _Shit!_ "

It wasn't just Natalie who yelled that profanity, cutting herself off; the expletive came from all directions, out of the mouths of the other people and digimon alike. The icy fog had gathered quicker this time; perhaps the cold air was a factor, but either way, it didn't matter. The ultimate point was that another rain of icicles went out, interrupting any attacks or attempted conversation.

"We're not going to be able to do anything to it like this!" Meghan yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth so everyone could at least stand a chance of hearing her. "It's too strong!"

"But if they digivolve, then it might go from bad to worse," Peter said, looking up at where Corymon and Banshemon were beginning an attempt to attempting to keep Draugmon's attention in the air so that those on the ground could regroup.

"Black Stinger!"

"Banshee's Call!"

"It's already _worse_ ," Xander barked, "because it's actively trying to kill us!" It did seem that most digimon, even the destructive ones, were more interested in fighting other digimon than in harming humans. There had been exceptions, but they _were_ exceptions, rather than the rule.

"So, what, are we just supposed to hope that we get bailed out by the _others_?" Ibexmon said as he watched the attacks hit Draugmon to no effect but to annoy it. Ibexmon's tone betrayed a clear distaste with the idea.

This was a distate that Frekimon shared. " _Hell no!_ " she snapped through her teeth. "We can deal with this ourselves!"

"You sure of that!?" Corymon called down, narrowly dodging a swipe of Draugmon's massive claws.

Natalie looked around herself, feeling everything careening rapidly out of hand. The best thought she had right now was to hold it off and hope that Ratamon showed up again to whisk Draugmon away. Even if they didn't know what Ratamon's deal was, their primary directive right now was to prevent things from getting worse in the moment.   
So caught up was Natalie that she didn't immediately realize that the new girl -- who Natalie was still close enough to to hear -- was muttering to herself.

"Christ, this wasn't supposed to happen," the girl said, and that caught Natalie's attention; she glanced over with a look of vague confusion. She was about to open her mouth to ask, saw a very important detail she hadn't until now.

Gripped tightly in the new girl's hand was, unmistakably, a D-Rive-- admittedly a slightly odd one, as it was entirely black, without a contrasting faceplate, and it seemed to lack the silver charm hanging off one edge, but Natalie had spent enough time looking at D-Rives to tell them apart from phones when she saw them. She was looking down at it as though it would reveal anything useful.

"Black Ice!"

A sweep of Draugmon's claws caught both Ibexmon and Frekimon. Ibexmon was sent skidding into a wall, cracking the ice that was creeping up over it, while Frekimon was slammed into an icicle stuck in the ground. When she hit it, it burst into razor-sharp shards that flew in every direction-- for not the first time, the humans had to cover their faces lest they lose an eye to a rogue ice crystal.   
Both digimon righted themselves in short order, and neither was too hurt, but neither looked better for their trouble, either.

Natalie, though, was looking at the new girl, who only barely seemed to be paying attention to anything around her. "What's your name?"

The girl looked vaguely surprised at being addressed; she looked at Natalie blankly for a moment, then said, "Lily."

"Natalie," Natalie said, giving her own name curtly. There were no times for any more complicated introductions, and Lily only barely seemed to be paying attention to anything; she seemed to be in some kind of shock. "Sorry we had to meet like this, Lily." She winced as the earth practically shook under the force of Draugmon's heavy footsteps. "I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark," she said, gesturing at the giant skull-faced digimon, "and guess you know each other?"

Lily nodded. "Yes. ... I think so, anyway. I'm not entirely _sure_ that's him, but-- christ, I didn't exactly mean for this to happen--" she said, digging her fingers into her hair.

"What kind of dick would blame you for this?" Natalie said, a little bit taken aback.   
She nervously glanced to the side; the digimon were trading blows, but every time Draugmon returned volley, it was doing more damage, both to the street and to the digimon. Sirens were getting closer, and judging by how well it had gone last time, whatever forces they were calling in were either going to get a very cold reception (oh, come on, this was no time for that kind of joke), or make things worse.

But if this thing was this new girl's partner, then waiting for Ratamon to bail them out wasn't an option.

"We have to do something!" Meghan yelled. "Someone has to digivolve or it's going to wreck the entire block!"

"Any volunteers?" Xander yelled back, and unsurprisingly, nobody stepped up to the plate immediately.

Natalie chewed on the inside of her cheek, furrowing her brow. Meghan was right-- the way things were going right now, the most they were doing was delaying things.   
"You think that's your partner, then?" she said, looking at Lily. She was taking a few logical leaps from Point A to Point D, but she felt it was a fair assumption, and there was no time to ask questions B and C. Lily nodded, and Natalie breathed through her nose.

"Doctorimon!" she called, beckoning her partner over; he cautiously did, leaping backwards and landing next to Natalie.

"Yes?"

"Do you think you can--?" Digivolve? Or rather, keep control of yourself if you digivolve? She wasn't sure how to phrase what she meant to ask.

Doctorimon seemed to understand her basic question, at least, and she couldn't help but feel like he was following her train of thought, no matter how impossible that was.   
"I don't know," he said honestly, watching as Corymon was knocked into a building and Banshemon only narrowly avoided being sliced into ribbons.

"Are you willing to try?"

Doctorimon paused and looked at her. He glanced at Natalie, about to ask why she would ask, but then he looked to Lily-- and he saw the D-Rive in her hands, and the pained expression on her face, and Natalie could practically hear the gears turning in his head.

"I'm counting on you for this," he said slowly, and then nodded. Natalie nodded back, clutching her D-Rive close to her chest as it began to faintly glow purple.

"Everyone get back!" Natalie yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth as Doctorimon leapt forward. Her warning was unnecessary; her D-Rive began to screech as purple light began to creep up Doctorimon's arms and legs, but it felt like the screeching lasted a shorter time the second time around. This didn't make it any more bearable to listen to as Raumon began to make that pained and feral noise himself-- a noise Natalie had hoped she'd never have to hear again.

She felt her stomach turn over. She couldn't place why, but she had been hoping against hope that maybe last time had been some kind of fluke, but there was no going back now.

"Doctorimon, catalyst evolve to-- IlDoctorimon!" His voice cut out as he was engulfed in light turning from humanoid plague doctor into massive long-necked vulture. He ran forward the moment he had finished re-forming, throwing himself at Draugmon with a feral screech.   
The humans were moving back towards each other after having been scattered. In turn, the other partner digimon fell back, not wanting to de-digivolve in case they were needed, but they had learned well enough that they didn't want to be in the line of fire.

"Ashes to Ashes!"

 

Speaking of fire. IlDoctorimon tossed his head to spit the black flames around him, and they had an immediate effect on the thick ice. Pops and sizzles filled the air as dark fire came in contact with the ice, cracking and buckling as it melted and re-froze.   
This pavement was, in a word, fucked, but it was hard to care.

"You want me to get in on this?" Corymon asked Xander as she landed close to the humans. The other digimon were coming over, one by one, as well.

"No," Natalie said, shaking her head. "I don't know if we can be sure that they won't go overboard if we try to go two on one."

"What's your point?" Frekimon said, digging deep grooves into the ice with her claws as she skidded to a stop near them. "That sounds like it'd be a lot faster to me, and then you could just scream at us until we come back to normal."

Peter glanced at Frekimon. "Considering we don't know how consistently we can get any of you to de-digivolve, I don't think that's a risk I'd want to run, just to more efficiently eliminate--"

"I'd _really_ appreciate if you didn't kill him," Lily said, staring at the ground. She sounded less confident than she wanted to.

"No offense, but who asked you?" Xander said, frustration in his voice; he clearly thought he was dealing with a nosy civilian.

"She has a D-Rive," Sam said; he hadn't had it pointed out to him, he had just noticed it. With those four words, the entire group was able to fill in the blanks themselves.   
Introductions would have to go around later.

By this point, the street was a disaster zone; the ice had begun to spread further and further. The frozen wave creeped outward, stopping police cars dead in their tracks; no helicopters were willing to draw near, not after last time, but the sound of chopper blades could be heard from where they were hovering outside of Draugmon's attack range. This was functionally a space for digimon only-- and those few humans stupid enough to have made friends with them.

"Black Ice..." Draugmon hissed, like air being let out of a tire. IlDoctorimon had just lunged for him, and with one well-placed swipe, he knocked the vulture back.

The sound of scraping filled the air. Draugmon threw IlDoctorimon backwards with one well-placed swipe of his claws, and as he was shoved back, IlDoctorimon dug his foot-claws into the ice. Unlike Frekimon's similar maneuver just moments before, he was bigger, moving faster, and the sound was the kind of horrible screech that rattled the teeth of anyone who heard it. He lost his balance and tumbled backwards, only narrowly avoiding crashing into the humans and digimon laying in wait.

Draugmon rattled out a not-a-breath, icy fog coalescing above his head as he began to advance, his huge paws and massive weight crushing the ice underneath him.   
"Dead of--" he began, rearing up onto his hind legs.

IlDoctorimon was still getting to his feet, but he didn't need to be upright to cut that short. "Ashes to Ashes!" he croaked, rearing his head back and breathing a concentrated stream of black fire directly into Draugmon's face.

The hiss of rapidly-melting ice as the flames licked at Draugmon's impromptu icy battlefield mixed with the low hiss Draugmon himself was making. Instead of slamming his claws into the ground, Draugmon began clawing at his skull as what skin, fur, and flesh were around his face were charred black by the direct hit. He was clearly in pain.   
Draugmon reared up to his full height, slow and careful, like he might fall apart if he moved too quickly. "Dead of Winter," he hissed, smashing his claws down and hauling the earth beneath his feet apart. The cracks shot out-- they were mostly focused under IlDoctorimon, somehow knowing where to go, but just as before, they spidered out under the feet of everyone present.

The fact that the digimon had not yet de-digivolved was a blessing.

Xander flung himself at Corymon, hooking an arm around her neck as she lifted into the air; Banshemon grabbed Peter under the arms and hoisted him up with a bit of effort. Ibexmon all but scooped Meghan onto his back with a toss of his head, while Frekimon grabbed Sam and picked her partner up under her arm like a linebacker. All four digimon scattered before the ground could split open; this left Natalie and Lily to scramble away on foot, seeing as their partners were currently in the middle of attempting to murder each other.

As you do.

Lily didn't move-- she was busy staring at Draugmon, a sort of fear in her eyes, and so Natalie took the initiative by shoving Lily bodily away from the forming cracks. Lily skidded away on the ice just as the frostbitten hands emerged, and Natalie felt several of the hands grasp around her ankles.

The hands were unfathomably cold, colder than they had been the last times; against bare skin, it was functionally indistinguishable from having searing-hot metal pressed against her flesh.

Natalie, understandably enough, screamed. The sound drew the eyes of every human and digimon on the street-- including IlDoctorimon and Draugmon.

IlDoctorimon easily wrenched his way out of the hands that were grabbing him. Turning his back on Draugmon, he came barelling towards Natalie with a horrible squawking noise, and for a second, she felt fear seize her heart--

It wasn't the most elegant or even the least painful thing in the world, but IlDoctorimon shoved Natalie free of the hands with a shove of his neck; his feathers were oily and ragged to the touch, but Natalie didn't have much time to contemplate this before she went skidding across the ice. The dead hands snapped like toothpicks and burst into dust the moment they were severed, but a dozen more emerged in their place to grab at IlDoctorimon in Natalie's absence.

With a truly sickening crunch, the earth slammed back together, catching IlDoctorimon in it as it did. He let loose a horrible keen as the ground settled back down, struggling to get back up to his feet. With Draugmon already beginning to create icicles above his head, IlDoctorimon only had a limited amount of time to get up.

Natalie almost wanted to throw up, and it was hard to tell if it was because of the sound, seeing her partner in pain, or the fact that he-- as IlDoctorimon, struggling, fighting against a ferality -- had still thrown himself into the line of fire to protect her.   
(She couldn't even imagine how Lily must have felt.)

Meghan and Xander stayed on their partners; Corymon was staying a short ways above the ground, while Ibexmon was simply tensed and ready to run if he had to. Frekimon and Banshemon, less suited to carrying their partners, set them back down next to Natalie and Lily.

Lily stared between the others in turn, and she felt something unpleasant and bitter well up inside of her. These people, with their partners, who changed back when they needed them, who fought against the corruption to save them, who weren't _attacking them_ , who hadn't been missing for three weeks-- hell, even IlDoctorimon, who was feral and wild and single-mindedly focusing on ripping Draugmon to shreds, had, at great personal risk, wrenched control of himself long enough to bail her out.

And what did she have?   
And they didn't _care_ , they barely seemed to understand what was going on at all--

Was that really the case, though...? All around her, digimon and human alike, they were afraid and panicked and angry and worried and desperately trying to figure things out, a full rainbow of negative emotions all tied up on their faces. None were moreso than Natalie, who was clutching her D-Rive close to her chest, watching, struck numb as IlDoctorimon was practically entangled with Draugmon. With a hiss, Draugmon knocked IlDoctorimon just far enough back that one of its icicles would have a straight shot at the bird.

Lily glanced down at her D-Rive. It had reactivated in Draugmon's presence; that wasn't entirely surprising.

What was surprising about it, though, was that it had been opened to the radar, and--

Nobody had been looking at anything but the fight in all the commotion, and almost as soon as Lily snapped her head up to look around, a voice rang out.

"I was _wondering_ how long it'd take for someone to look up!"

The voice was new to the scene, but familiar to most of those who heard it-- and yet it was just about the worst possible thing that could have happened at this point in time. The heads of digimon and human alike snapped upwards to where the voice had come from; even IlDoctorimon and Draugmon seemed to, if not stop their tearing at each other, at least reel it back a little bit.   
Sitting atop a building, several stories above street level, was a familiar little shape. Admittedly, most of its features were hard to discern, because it was small and far above them, but there was one giveaway feature that was visible even from ground level:

Huge eyes, vivid green and pink, and shiny, shiny, _shiny_.

"Ratamon!"   
The exclamation rose from more than half of the onlookers. Banshemon said it with apprehension, while Natalie was a more forceful kind of surprised; Sam and Frekimon, speaking in unison, were incredulous and mildly annoyed. Xander took it straight from _mild_ annoyance to _straight up what the fuck_ , while Meghan and Corymon were simply confused.

"Long time no see!" Ratamon chirrupped in his singsongy voice, jumping down from the rooftop he was sitting on. His little wings flapped frantically to slow his descent, but he landed in short order, practically springing off the ground, softening his landing on his big, cushion-y tail.

He dusted himself off, his little feathery ears twitching.

"MOVE!"   
Ibexmon yelled at the top of his lungs, and it was quickly apparent why.

While they were all looking at Ratamon, so too had Ratamon drawn Draugmon's attention. While most of them were simply confused, though, Draugmon knew exactly what he felt about this situation.

The massive undead ice-bear was suddenly flinging himself forward with shocking speed, smashing his claws into the icy ground to gain traction. He barrelled straight past IlDoctorimon, smacking the scrawny bird aside with one swipe. His mouth was open in what might have been a roar as he threw his entire body at Ratamon. If not for the fact that this was _terrifying_ , the sight of such a huge digimon going berserker after such a tiny one might have been funny. Nothing could have stopped him, even if they had tried.   
Corymon, with Xander still on her back, took off; Ibexmon, with Meghan in tow, bounded in the same direction. Natalie, Lily, Sam, and Peter found themselves dragged by Frekimon and Banshemon in the same direction as the goat had gone. All they could do was _get the fuck out of the way_ , and so they did.

Except Ratamon himself.

Ratamon stood, patiently, watching Draugmon approach him.

In the blink of an eye and a streak of white, Ratamon was gone, and Draugmon collided at full speed with the building Ratamon had just descended from. The building very much lost that fight. It felt like a miracle that it didn't immediately begin to crumble entirely as a huge chunk of the wall was taken out in the collision, and Draugmon was dazed for a few precious moments.   
(One could only hope and pray that most of the people who had been inside had already gotten out...)

"What the fuck?" Peter hissed through pressed teeth, stumbling backwards.

Xander whispered something frantically in Corymon's ear, and she nodded. She landed long enough to let him off of her back while they tried to find where Ratamon had gone.

He wasn't hard to find, as he stood out like a bright little beacon of white in the dark. He was sitting on top of a bent streetlamp pole, like he had been there the entire time.   
"Rude," he said admonishingly, shaking his head. Draugmon was already forcing himself back up, preparing to charge again, and undoubtedly he would have just as much respect for property as he had had a moment ago.

Corymon rose back into the air, curling her tail underneath her. "Black Stinger!" she yelled, and a round of the staticky arrow-heads shot directly at Ratamon.

Another blink of an eye, another streak of white, and Ratamon had moved somewhere else. Corymon's attack took out the rest of that already-a-goner streetlamp pole. Even so, it was immediately evident that what she had been trying to do had worked; Draugmon stopped before he charged, trying to find where Ratamon was.

"Keep him moving!" Xander said quickly to the other digimon close to him, struggling to speak loud enough to be heard but not so loud that everyone and sundry (read: Ratamon) could hear his plan.

"What if they damage the buildings, though--?" Meghan began, clambering off Ibexmon's back.

 

"Better than _that_ ," Peter said, pointing to the damage Draugmon had done to the building he had crashed into.

"Cool," Frekimon said, "a chance to work out some of this pent-up frustration with the little puffball."

The moment she had located Ratamon, she fired a New Moon Fire right at him. Once again, the strange little digimon practically vanished from how fast he moved, and the green fireball sailed right past him, leaving a scorch mark on the brick building behind him.

"Come on, now you're just being mean," he said, sticking his tongue out-- and he was still grinning. His grin didn't fade when a flurry of white ghosts from Banshemon was coming for him, and he took off again, skittering around the icy battlefield with ease. Trying to follow him was enough to give someone whiplash, but it was, at least for the moment, working.   
Draugmon was trying to follow Ratamon's path and was so distracted by this that it gave IlDoctorimon more than enough time to right himself from where Draugmon had thrown him aside, and get a little bit of violent revenge, up close and personal.

(Natalie had a thought, then; she didn't remark on it, but she pulled her phone out and swallowed her pride while everyone else was focusing elsewhere.)

Lily watched all this chaos around her, clutching her D-Rive close to her chest.   
IlDoctorimon was disconcerting just by sight alone, moving unnaturally and spitting black flames with a single-minded focus on attacking Draugmon. The other four digimon were trying to keep Ratamon occupied, but it was hard to feel that they _weren't_ being strung along and toyed with.

"Why are you doing this," Lily muttered, and even she wasn't sure if she was talking to Draugmon, to Ratamon, to the other humans and their partners.

At present, Draugmon looked worse for the wear, as a result of his scrapping with IlDoctorimon; massive jagged tears torn in his frostbitten exposed musculature, teeth that had been knocked out of his skeletal face, patches of his loose-hanging hide burnt and mangled. A fair number of the icicles sticking out of his arms and shoulders had been broken off and the blood-stained bandages wrapped around his upper arms and midsection were starting to unravel.

IlDoctorimon was faring only _marginally_ better; his tattered wing-like sleeves were torn to pieces, with frost clinging to his feathers and the bare skin of his hands and feet looking like it was starting to discolour from the cold -- and it was only colder once he got up close and personal with Draugmon. Massive gashes crisscrossed his body, seeping dark blood that left streaked red trails on the icy street.

"We're being fucked with," Sam said quietly.

"What makes you think that?" Peter asked.

" _Because_ ," Sam said bluntly, "Ratamon _is Ratamon_." The little white dragon-squirrel _thing_ had only been shifty and suspicious even when he had seemed benign, and he had done nothing recently to earn any more trust. Nobody could disagree with that.

" _Great,_ " Xander hissed, digging his fingers into his hair.

"I'm not surprised," Lily said bitterly, staring at the ground; she couldn't stand to stare at IlDoctorimon and Draugmon any longer.

Meghan looked to Lily and tilted her head to one side. "How much do you know about Ratamon?"

Lily shut her mouth and stared at the ground, pressing her lips tight.

"I'm not going to press right now," Sam said after a moment, "but the second we're not in the middle of an active warzone, you'd better explain. We've had enough of this _you don't understand and we're not going to tell you about it_."

Even if Lily had wanted to explain herself then and there, there were suddenly much more pressing matters at hand.

"Hypothermia," Draugmon hissed. The fog over his head had been slowing down in its accretion; it seemed that Draugmon was running out of steam, so to speak, and so he only produced one icicle for this round of his attack.

Or maybe that was all he figured he needed.

That one massive icicle shot from straight above Draugmon's head, at almost point-blank range, and smashed through IlDoctorimon's thin, hollow chest.

More than a few of those watching made horrified noises at the sight of IlDoctorimon, speared clean through the ribs by a massive icicle. IlDoctorimon himself made an unearthly noise, rearing his head back, and he let loose with one last attack.   
"Ashes to Ashes!"   
Blood dripped from his mouth as much as fire did, but it did the job-- a concentrated blast of black fire, aimed straight at Draugmon. The spike of ice was caught in the crossfire as well, and began to melt rapidly as the stream of fire passed over it.

As the last black embers slipped from his wrenched-open beak, IlDoctorimon began to glow purple. His shape distorted as he began to shrink back down to his rookie form, and what was left of the icicle stood where it was, streaked with freezing black blood. It was a small blessing that Raumon did not stay impaled on it, as he shrunk down and re-formed mere inches to the side of it.

" _RAUMON_!" Natalie yelled so loud she could almost feel her throat tearing. She didn't even have the time to register what was going on, her feet carrying her towards her partner. She was stumbling, the cold-burn on her leg impeding her, but adrenaline is a funny thing.

Draugmon wasn't doing so hot either -- or rather, quite the opposite: he was doing entirely _too_ hot.

He had reared back as the black flames struck him, and the sickly smell of burning flesh filled the air. He tilted his head back and his skeletal jaw fell open as his entire body was wracked by heaving shakes, and it seemed for all the world like he was trying to scream in pain as he stumbled backwards, away from Raumon. An icy fog began to overtake him, spilling out of his open mouth, and--

And a cracking noise filled the air-- Draugmon was beginning to freeze.   
His body was going into overdrive trying to counteract the flames and the damage that had already been done, and in seconds, he came to a complete stop. The white fire lights in his eye-sockets began to fade out as Draugmon slowed, and he stood, unmoving.

Natalie was holding Raumon in her arms, not yet minimizing him; she wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure he was still breathing. Peter and Meghan both ran forth to check on her, and their partners weren't far behind. Sam and Xander stood where they were, their own partners flanking them; they both watched on with more concern than either wanted to admit.

Lily, meanwhile, immediately hurled herself at the now-motionless Draugmon, but she was not the only one who did.

Ratamon, little more than a white streak as he bounded over the ground at breakneck speed.

Ibexmon was quick on the draw, though. "Terra Spear!"

A sharpened spire of rock shot out of the ground immediately in front of Ratamon's path. Between his high speed and the slippery ground, he wasn't able to veer out of the way in time to avoid collision. He tumbled to the side, having only having marginal success in veering away; he righted himself in moments, but that tiny delay was enough for Lily to make it to Draugmon first.

Lily had no fucking idea what she was doing, but she reached out. Even though it was so cold it felt like putting her hand on a hot iron, she pressed her hand up against Draugmon's frozen fur and kept her hand there. A moment later, the point she had touched began to-- well, perhaps _glow_ was a bad word. From the point she touched, a pitch black energy spread out across Draugmon's body. This darkness began to consume and swirl around Draugmon, until it engulfed him entirely.

Ratamon flung himself forward, and his claws began to glow, leaving behind glitchy white streaks in the air behind him. He bounded at Draugmon, but something deeply bizarre happened as he approached the black shape.   
Like magnets repelling each other, some invisible force seemed to stop Ratamon. Where the white glow of his claws met the black energy, the very air around Ratamon seemed to glitch and shift and distort, and the air filled up with a familiar screeching noise, just for a half a second. The little white digimon was practically hurled backwards, and the sound stopped.

"What _are those fucking things_ ," Ratamon hissed, entirely to himself, inaudible by anyone else.

For a split second, Draugmon's black aura seemed to take on a different shape entirely. With an deafening cracking sound, the massive digimon's body shattered into shards of pitch-black ice.

Lily didn't even seem to register that she was assailed by a veritable rain of razor-sharp ice, because her attention was entirely on the small huddled shape, covered in blood and dust, ichor and ice, that was left behind-- Brockmon.

This was many of those present's first view of him; though it was hard to make out the details, he was a large badger, indigo, white, and pale purple-grey, with red leather straps wrapped around his forearms. An impressive ruff of white fur sat around his neck, and massive blunt claws ended his hands and feet; his claws, fur, and leathery black nose were all tipped in frost, and he breathed slow and shallow.   
Lily was on her knees immediately, her hands on Brockmon.

 

***

For Ryan, Eli, and Jen, trying to make their way to the site of the incident was proving to be difficult. Police and news and ambulances and backed-up traffic and hundreds of people trying, understandably enough, to keep as many people away from the disaster area as they could.

Problem was, they actually needed to be there, and had a reason to be there.

Even flying in on Malakhimon was out of the question-- even disregarding that it would have left Jen and Eli out of luck if Ryan had taken that option, the helicopters had come out in full force, and he _really_ didn't feel like trying to ride in on his partner's back when the possibility existed that they might get _shot down_.

"This is a fuckin' trainwreck," Eli said as they caught their breath behind a dumpster. Ryan was checking his D-Rive-- they were close... so why had it gotten quiet, when they could hear the commotion from blocks away mere minutes ago? Ryan wanted to double-check.

"Yeah, never exactly thought this would culminate in hiding from the cops," Jen said, shaking her head. "Not really on my bucket list, yanno?"

"S'not the first time I've done it," Eli said thoughtfully. "And this is a lot less stupid than the last time I did. Last time involved a zamboni." He paused, and glanced at the ground, which was covered in a thin veneer of frost-- that was how close they were. "Then again, the zamboni might be useful now."

Jen regarded him with a raised eyebrow. "Either you're lying, or you live a _weird_ life."

Ryan sighed, running a hand backwards through his hair. Draugmon wasn't on the radar anymore, and nor was IlDoctorimon, but Ratamon _was_ , and that spelled trouble-- possibly significantly bigger trouble than before. "If you want to bail, now's your chance."

Eli and Jen both responded with a negative in the kind of way that would seem to suggest that Ryan was kind of silly for even suggesting it. Having had the chance to re-gather, the trio began to move again.

Ryan really hoped it wasn't too late. Even _he_ knew that if Natalie had been worried enough about what was going on to _actually reach out to him_ (to _him_ ), shit must have been going south.

 

***

As Draugmon disappeared, Ratamon changed tack.

He clapped his little claws together excitedly, and attention snapped back onto him in a heartbeat. He had righted himself after his rather undignified incident, but frankly, if he hadn't been on thin ice for trust earlier, he had sunken to the bottom of the frozen lake at this point.   
"Really well done!" he said in a chipper tone, beaming. Nobody was sure how to respond to this, so Natalie stepped up to the plate.

"What do you want?" she cut straight to the point, brow furrowed.

Ratamon glanced to the side. "What? I'm just checking up on you, that's all," he said, his tone still the same. "Making sure you don't take on more than you can handle. And you've done admirably!"

"It's a bit fuckin' late for that," Xander said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

Ratamon glanced around himself. The digimon still in champion form stood tense, preparing to fight, with their partners close at hand. Lily still knelt over Brockmon, with her back to him. Natalie was obscured for a moment by a flash of purple light as she minimized her partner, and then her eyes, too, were solidly on Ratamon, and she looked completely unconvinced by Ratamon's explanation. All of them did.

Tough crowd.

Ratamon heaved a heavy sigh, then fixed a carefree smile on his face. "It was worth a shot," he said, then he pointed one blunt claw at Lily's back. "Give me the catalyst."

"No." Lily's words were resolute and forceful while her tone stayed almost disconcertingly even.

"It wasn't really a request," Ratamon said, and boy oh boy, did his cheerful tone clash with his words.

Lily did not move. In fact she tensed slightly, her jaw set. With the press of a button and a whoosh of black energy, she minimized Brockmon into her D-Rive.

Ratamon paused for a moment.   
"You know, this would have gone a _lot_ easier if the lot of you would _just do what you were supposed to do_ ," he said, shaking his head, "but--"

Whatever he meant to follow up with got cut off by the timely arrival of the very late cavalry.

Ryan, Eli, and Jen came barrelling around the corner, and like students walking into class late, all eyes snapped to them. This, however, was far more dire than a lecture; with flashes of red, cyan, and gold, Shitomon, Hulimon, and Lurumon materialized next to their partners, bristling and ready to fight.

"Sorry we're late," Eli said dryly, which did nothing to ease the tension.

Reactions were mixed. Frekimon snorted, a bit derisive, clearly thinking they didn't need any backup; Banshemon sighed a sigh of tentative relief, though she kept at the alert, her claws raised.

Ratamon, though, curled his lip in vague distaste, like something vaguely foul-smelling was directly under his nose. "Oh. It's _you_."

"Whatever it is you think you're doing," Shitomon said, "I advise you don't."

"I love how everyone knows what's going on but us," Ibexmon muttered sarcastically, pawing at the ground with one hoof.

Ratamon hummed. "Oh, however am I to say no to such a compelling argument?" he said, tauntingly, looking at Shitomon. He turned, looking back to Lily. "You'll give me the catalyst. I realize you feel some sense of entitlement, but it's not yours to keep. I'll be back!"   
Lily wasn't even deigning to look at him; he didn't seem to care.   
"But I'd rather not deal with _this_ lot just this moment," he said, gesturing at Shitomon, Hulimon, and Lurumon, and his claws erupted in a glitchy white light. "You can relate, right? Of course you can. I'll be nice! I'll give _you_ that privilege."

Before they could register what he meant, Ratamon was moving. The only way to follow his movement was to watch for the glitchy streaks of light that lingered in his wake. Was he moving faster, or was it just that he was moving over shorter distances?

He leapt at Ibexmon first, and before anyone had the chance to attack him, he rocketed from Ibexmon to Frekimon, bouncing off Frekimon onto a light post; he leapt from there to a wall which he scrabbled up quickly. With this new height he was able to leap onto Corymon's back, and before she could throw him off, he leapt back down, sprinting past (almost through) Banshemon. He didn't seem to do any damage, but as he came in contact with (or at least passed) each digimon, he seemed to 'tag' them, his glowing claws phasing through their bodies. Considering they were spread out on the street, this was no simple feat, but Ratamon covered the distance around them in record time.

It didn't take long before it was apparent what he had done, before he had even skidded to a stop-- and as soon as he had done that, he took off like a little white shot, and was gone from sight in moments.

One after another, Meghan, Sam, Xander, and Peter's D-Rives -- in that order -- began to emit that ear-bleeding screech, and circuit-like light began to emanate out from the points that Ratamon had touched across each digimon's body.

" _Fuck_ ," Peter hissed.

"You can say that again," Xander said through gritted teeth.

 

"Ibexmon, catalyst evolve to-- Cabramon!"

"Frekimon, catalyst evolve to-- Grimmon!"

"Corymon, catalyst evolve to-- Camazmon!"

"Banshemon, catalyst evolve to-- Onryomon."

 

Grimmon reared her head back and roared, and between the screeching of her metal mask and her voice, it was loud enough to shake the bones of anyone who heard it. Camazmon rose into the air with staggered, aryhthmic flaps of her four wings, and she was almost cackling with every breath; Cabramon's snake-head tail thrashed as his nine eyes twitched and glanced in every direction; Onryomon settled on the ground with eery quiet compared to the heavy breathing and snarling and growling and cackling of those around her.

"This is bad, this is so bad," Meghan said, digging her hands into her hair, stumbling a few feet backwards. She had never really wanted to see Cabramon if she could help it, and around her, she could almost feel the same sentiment from Xander, Peter, and Sam.   
To say nothing of Natalie-- and from there, to say even less of Lily...

They were all in this shitshow together.

Somehow, that wasn't comforting.

"You know, I'm not even _surprised_ at this point," Hulimon said, as he was surrounded by cyan light, as Shitomon and Lurumon were consumed by their respective colours in turn.

In a moment, they were replaced with Hokkaimon, Malakhimon, and Himamon-- and of course, it wasn't a moment too soon.

"Kamikaze Dive!" Camazmon laughed like a jackal, her claws glowing as she threw herself straight at the three digimon before they had even finished digivolving up to champion.

"Moon Bomb!" Hokkaimon yelled, leaping backwards while Malakhimon and Himamon took into the air and shot in the other direction, respectively. throwing a glowing orb into the spot where he had just been standing, where it exploded in Camazmon's face like a firecracker.

With the floodgates opened, all hell broke loose as a four-on-three fight commenced-- but as evidenced from the fact that the 'three' were only at champion level, it was clear they were holding back, just trying to occupy the four catalyst-evolved digimon.   
Ryan, Jen, and Eli made a break for it, not wanting to be smack in the middle of this disaster zone. They beelined for where the other humans were loosely gathered, coalesced around Natalie and Lily, in the dust and the slowly-melting ice left behind by Draugmon.

"Okay, fill me in, here, what the _hell_ did we miss?" Ryan said as he jogged into earshot.

"Draugmon," Natalie said, then she gestured at Lily, "turns out Draugmon is this girl's partner, Raumon catalyst digivolved--"

"Hold on, back up, new girl, what?" Jen interrupted, looking between Natalie and Lily. Lily was staying quiet, her arms folded around herself and her eyes on the ground.

"We'll explain later, once _we_ have any idea," Meghan said, a little bit resigned, a little bit helpless, unable to take her eyes off of the fighting digimon.

"Long story short, shit went to shit, shit's still shit, and then you showed up," Xander filled in.

Eli shrugged. "Can't argue with that." He glanced over at the fight, practically a tangle of digimon trading blows with each other.

Shit had, indeed, gone to shit.   
No matter how careful they were trying to be -- and oh, were the trio of angel-dragon, red panda, and fox trying to be careful -- nothing was going to save the fact that the four ultimate-level digimon didn't seem even remotely interested in things like self-preservation, the preservation of their allies, or the preservation of any of the buildings or the street, and if it had been bad when it had just been Draugmon, this was a _disaster_.

The best the three could do was lob attacks to draw attention and ire whenever things were getting hairy, but as they were outnumbered... well.

"How the hell are we supposed to bring them back down if getting closer is a death sentence?" Peter muttered, placing his hand over his mouth and tapping on his cheek in thought. (He felt significantly less cool-headed than he was acting, and his voice just barely gave this away.)

"We have to figure out _something_ before things get worse," Meghan said, and she was doing a much poorer job of seeming unfazed.

"We're going to have to just try to defeat them," Ryan said, folding his arms; in contrast to the others' varying levels of distress, he sounded far more confident than he probably had the right to be. "It's not safe and we don't have the time to try and bring them down any other way. I bet money only have so long before they're going to start calling in air strikes or something."   
That... was a thought they didn't want to contemplate, but what Ryan said immediately next was surprising to everyone but Eli and Jen.   
"That sound like a plan?"

"Since when do _you_ even pretend to care?" Xander said, raising an eyebrow. Ryan blanched slightly, apparently not having forgotten that his last interaction with Xander had been his fist.

"I figured it'd be nice to ask," Ryan said coolly, taking a slightly defensive half-step backwards and he shrugged. "But I mean, if you'd rather let them run wild, I mean, that's on you, I guess."

Peter picked up the conversational thread instead. "I'd rather we don't," he said slowly, shaking his head, "but I think they're going to pose a bigger threat to themselves if we don't."   
Practically on cue, Camazmon, gripping Himamon's tail in her jaws, smashed into a building, sending rubble and concrete crumbling down on where Malakhimon was occupying Onryomon's attention below her, at street level. Hokkaimon, tasked with occupying both Grimmon and Cabramon, was weaving in and out, ducking and weaving and throwing glowing orbs left and right, trying to luring them into attacking each other. Really, though, his primary intention was just to avoid taking the brunt of both their attacks.

"We--" Meghan said, clenching her hands into fists. The idea of willingly agreeing to see her partner, even her partner like this, be hurt, wasn't one she wanted to even consider, but... Right now, trying to intervene by themselves was a bit too dangerous. "... yeah."

Sam nodded slowly, his lips pressed tightly together, and Xander -- after a moment -- followed suit.

Natalie furrowed her brow and heaved a heavy sigh. She looked over at Lily, who had barely said a word since Draugmon had de-digivolved, but said nothing herself.   
She was wondering if she hadn't done the wrong thing by calling for backup.

"Try to bring them down!" Ryan yelled, cupping his hands over his mouth; he had to trust that not only Malakhimon but the other digimon as well had heard him, because they were a tad too busy to give explicit affirmation.

Their digimon, though, seemed to get the message-- because the street filled up with brilliant light, and as though by instinct, for at least a moment, the ultimate level digimon flinched away from the light. Camazmon dropped Himamon, Grimmon and Cabramon both leapt backwards from Hokkaimon, and Onryomon drew her hands back from Malakhimon like someone pulling their hands away from a hot stove.

 

"Malakhimon, conduction evolve to... Eudaemon!"

"Himamon, conduction evolve to... Shaolimon!"

"Hokkaimon, conduction evolve to... Yokaimon!"

 

"Eighteen Paw Strike!" Shaolimon cried, leaping up to give a bit of payback to Camazmon in the form of an uppercut. Her claws glowed bright gold for mere moments as she delivered a series of lightning-fast spiked-knuckle punches at the peak of her jump. She wasn't able to relax; Cabramon charged forward, hooking the red panda on his curved horns as the red panda alighted on the ground once more, only to take the brunt of Yokaimon's claws after making the mistake of turning his back. Eudaemon created a spear of brilliant light to fend Onryomon off, only to leave herself open to Grimmon's claws.

It was... not better, honestly, because it had turned into a proper free-for-all, with the conduction-evolved digimon switching targets practically at whim. Keeping track of which digimon was where was enough of a hassle. Luckily, once the three had turned it up a notch, it couldn't last forever.

"Obsidian Spire!"

"Ruby Oculus!"

Cabramon raised a twisted spike of glass and rock from the ground, only to have it shattered by Eudaemon's scarlet beam of energy a moment later; Camazmon threw herself at Yokaimon in a full-body tackle, only to go smashing into the ground. The fox had vanished in a puff of blue smoke, reappearing unharmed a moment later, only to recieve the brunt of Onryomon's Ivory Viper tail-blade right between the ribs.

"Dragon's Breath!" Shaolimon yelled, taking a swig of alcohol from a cask she pulled out of thin air before spitting a stream of golden flames right in Grimmon's face. The hellhound growled low and reared back, the golden flames mingling with her acid-green ones, and Shaolimon followed up immediately by rushing in for a melee attack. "Eighteen Paw Strike!"

"Purge the Wicked!" Eudaemon cried, a blindingly-bright spear appearing in her hands. She surged forward with a flap of her wings, locking her weapon with Cabramon's horns.

"Chimera Focus!" Cabramon spat through grit teeth, the red beams from all nine of his eyes coverging the mere feet in front of him on a focal point of Eudaemon. The beam practically exploded; the angel digimon kicked off the ground and leapt backwards into the air, but the force knocked Cabramon back as well, sending him skidding down the street towards the humans.

Eudaemon lifted into the air, and she hurled her light-spear at Cabramon. It struck true, sinking into Cabramon's side, and he roared with pain-- and began to glow bright orange, a light that consumed the spear and seemed to practically dissolve it as he began to shrink.   
Natalie reached out to keep Meghan from running forward to retrieve Oremon, as she had seemingly instinctively begun to throw herself forward to do so. (Natalie could hardly say she blamed her, as she had done basically the same thing not that long ago.)

Not far away, Camazmon was trying, with reckless abandon, to lunge at Yokaimon; the fox kept vanishing into blue smoke, allowing Camazmon's inertia to be her own downfall as the bat crashed into walls and the street. She didn't seem to be bothered by it, laughing like a horrifying, deranged hyena the entire time.

"God, even _I_ find this giddy shit annoying, and you've seen my face," Yokaimon muttered to himself, his paws beginning to glow white-blue. "Moon Claw!" he cried, reappearing behind Camazmon before she could turn around and slashing hard. Camazmon continued laughing manically, even as a deep blue light began to overtake her.

"Why the hell are our digimon so much weaker than theirs," Natalie muttered out loud, frowning. It didn't _seem_ to just be the fact that Ryan and company had showed up late, after the digimon had been a bit worn out by dealing with Draugmon and chasing Ratamon, but it seemed like it took so much less effort for them to take their digimon down when they put effort into it.

Peter, though, sook his head. "They're plenty strong." He looked around at all the damage they had done, and sighed through his nose. "It's not an issue of power. It's that they're just out of control."

As if to illustrate this point, they looked over to where Shaolimon was being ganged up on by Onryomon and Grimmon. Believe you her, she was not having a particularly fun time, but she was making do, ducking and weaving to avoid Grimmon's fire and Onryomon's gripping dead hands.

"Black Metal!" Grimmon snarled, swiping out at Shaolimon with pitch-black metal claws, and the red panda deftly leapt backwards, procuring a keg of liquor from thin air.

"Dragon's Breath!"

A stream of golden flames escaped Shaolimon's mouth, mingling with Grimmon's green, causing the hellhound to rear back and snarl in pain. Onryomon was preparing to strike like a snake, but--

"Ruby Oculus!" Eudaemon announced, red energy shooting in a beam from the focus she created between her hands, and though it seemed to be a beam of light, her attack knocked Onryomon off-track, drawing the naga-ghost's attention away from Shaolimon.   
Shaolimon nodded her thanks to her ally, her paws settling back down on uneven, cracked ground.

Grimmon was not amused at being attacked, so she charged ahead, whether or not Shaolimon was ready. "Hellfire!"

Shaolimon, though she wasn't really ready for it, didn't waste a moment righting herself and throwing herself at Grimmon. "Eighteen Paw Strike!" The moment before she impacted the hellhound, though, she feinted, side-stepping to the side, rapid hits of her claws striking Grimmon's side instead.

Grimmon wrenched her metal mouth open as she was sent tumbling to the side by a charged swipe of Shaolimon's tail. She was quick to get back on her feet, growling low and prepared to retaliate. "Black Metal!" she snarled, her claws scraping horribly against the ground as she ran forward.

Shaolimon's claws flashed gold as she lunged forward, meeting Grimmon's metal claws with her own bare hands. Deflecting the paw that Grimmon had lifted to slash out with with a brush of her hand, she smashed the other hand underneath Grimmon's chin in a hard uppercut, sending the hound tumbling backwards. Before she even hit the ground, she was beginning to glow green, and not just from the fire around her neck.

"Ivory Viper."

A white blade of energy shot straight into Shaolimon's side, sliding between her ribs like a dagger and she stumbled to the side.

Onryomon had realized she was quickly growing outnumbered (as if her allies had ever been much of a boon in this shitshow), but she had kept her cool, firing off attacks left right and center while twisting her body in serpentine ways to avoid attacks from Yokaimon, throwing out blades of energy from her tail every few seconds in every direction.   
Yokaimon, though, was only keeping her occupied; Eudaemon had risen a short distance for a better vantage point under the cover of the fox's distraction.

"Purge the Wicked!"

The angel digimon's light spear came hurling out of the sky like a lightning bolt, hitting Onryomon squarely.   
An unearthly banshee's keen rose into the air for a split second as the ghost-naga digimon's body slumped backwards, and then the light of Eudaemon's spear was lost as Onryomon herself began to glow pure white as well.

Eudaemon drifted slowly back down, Yokaimon and Shaolimon flanking her on either side as the street went quiet for the second time that night.

Four digimon lay unconscious up and down the street; two more digimon were unconscious, minimized in D-Rives; three more digimon stood triumphant but exhausted, and a moment later, consumed by red, yellow, and cyan light, they shrunk down to their rookie forms.

As the humans ran forward to their respective partners, Shitomon fell to her knees, breathing heavily. "That takes more out of you than you expect it to," she said, wiping at her face with the back of her paw. She hoped that neither Hulimon nor Lurumon noticed that she was wiping away forced-back tears borne of some very mixed emotions.   
Both of them did, but neither said anything.

 

***

A few minutes later, all nine humans had done their best to escape the scene of the incident. Without evidence of the digimon nearby to pin them, and the police's reluctance to draw close immediately (after all, there had been a momentary lull between Draugmon and the second wave, and see how well _that_ would have gone), they were able to get away.

A short -- and slightly terse -- discussion led to the conclusion that they were going to go, as an entire nine-person group, to Ryan's apartment. They couldn't just part ways, but nobody really wanted to have big conversations out in the open. They wanted to be somewhere where they could let their digimon back out if they had to, and somewhere they could talk without being overheard, and that left Xander and Ryan's apartments; Xander declined to offer his apartment for use, so Ryan's place it was.   
(It also had the other advantage of the most people -- Ryan, Eli, Jen, and Natalie -- knowing where to go without further instruction.)

Lily was staying just barely apart from everyone, just slightly behind and to the side. Ryan, Eli, and Jen were mostly keeping to themselves, as well, but at the very least, it seemed that everyone knew that now was not the time for anyone to go running off on their own.   
(It was hard to say if it helped that Xander and Peter _both_ loudly threatened to punch anyone who tried to run off, but it didn't hurt.)

Meghan and Sam were helping Natalie walk, letting her drape her arms over their shoulders; once the adrenaline had worn off distracting her from the pain, the cold burn on her leg was going to need first aid at the very least. She was lucky. They could hear ambulances and sirens go off now that the area was being searched for people who had been injured.   
The news tomorrow was going to be fucking fascinating, but worse than that was the conversation that was coming sooner than later.

They were going to have... a lot to talk about.


	22. Episode 22: The Good That Won't Come Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haaaappy new year! :U

_-15 years ago-_

Heavy footsteps echoed off the crumbling walls of a once-mighty temple. Once, this had been home and hall to the god-king Dinmon. The lands around it had been lush and fertile, and the temple-castle had stood tall, towering over trees and even mountains. Digimon had passed through it with greater frequency than even the greatest cities elsewhere in the digital world, seeking counsel and guidance and trading and making great advances in education and invention, laying out the framework for almost all modern Digimon society.

Nothing so impressive stood here today, nor had it in many thousands of years.

Now, the temple had sunken into the ground, abandoned and in disrepair, and the land outside was barren and cracked and desolate. The shattered remains of intricate stained-glass domes lay scattered on the ground; enormous murals had been destroyed by heavy claws, stone and tile torn like cloth tapestries. Dust and dirt and sand from the barrens above covered every surface of the highest levels, especially here in what was once a resplendent throne room; the levels below were as likely to cave in as anything else.

Jotunmon regarded the dusty stones below his feet with a somber contemplation. He had been sequestered here for far too long. He had not been _alone_ ; he was never truly alone, and especially not here, but he had still dealt with other digimon. He still knew what was going on in the world outside, and he knew what was to happen soon. Soon -- any minute now -- the carriers would be crossing over to the other world.

No digimon had ever crossed to the human world-- none had even heard of such a thing. No path to it had ever been open. The way would only be open for a short time; timing was key, and there were a great number of things that could have gone wrong.

It was likely he would never see this place again, and though he had no great love for it, it still felt bittersweet.

His own role was twofold: first, and most pertinently, to secure their safe passage, interfering if they were being followed.   
The second was significantly more of a long game.   
When the five digimon had been chosen to carry fragments, that power was sealed inside them, made dormant, to keep them safe until it was needed; it would do them no favors if they succumbed to madness and risked death before they were needed. Something would be needed to reactivate it.

Jotunmon glanced upwards and he backed into the shadows as five dark shapes ran across the shattered glass dome overhead. Moments later, those dark shapes dropped into the ruined throne room, some more elegantly than others.

"Where is it?" one of the shapes snarled, looking around. They didn't seem to notice Jotunmon, which suited him fine; they didn't need to know he was here. They didn't need to know about him at all, as far as he was concerned.

"It hasn't _happened_ yet, dummy," one of the others said. "We have to wait until he pulls the plug. Which, really, he should get a move on, we're wasting moonlight."

"Be patient," another said, her voice calm and quiet.

"It's hard to be patient when we're being tracked," yet another said, this one the one who had brought up the back. "I'm not used to being on this end of the equation."   
Jotunmon steeled himself; the carriers were indeed being pursued, and that meant that he had to be prepared.

"We'd better have not shown up too early, or we're going to have problems," the foremost of the group said, looking over his shoulder. Motes of dust danced in the shafts of moonlight coming down from above.

And then they froze.   
The entire world seemed to freeze, in fact.   
A shuddering tremor reverberated through the ground. A groaning noise rang out, echoing off every wall, like the force of water against a dam about to break, but turned up a millionfold. It was more than deafening; it was practically immobilizing. If anyone looked up, they would see the sky itself begin to buckle under the weight of something that seemed impossible.

Before them, directly over the crumbled remains of the throne, the very fabric of reality looked like it was shifting and rippling-- and that was because it was. It began to distort, like it was iterating on itself a hundred-thousand times a second, growing worse and worse as it struggled against an invisible force.

With the sound of every ocean in the world trying to flood into the same tiny lake, a brilliantly bright light split the air at the focal point of the rippling distortion. It shone and shimmered and was searingly, blindingly bright; it distorted and glitched and shifted countless times in the blink of an eye, providing cursory glimpses of something, somewhere, far beyond this dusty throne-room.

The five digimon who had just arrived began to run towards it, looking almost like their feet were moving without their own will. Chances are, that was exactly what was happening; it was almost hypnotizing, and it took a massive effort on Jotunmon's part to not move towards it blindly, to dig in his heels against the compelling force.

"They're getting away!" a voice from above cried, clear as a bell over the cacophony.

"Move! Now!" the apparent leader yelled, leading the charge. The five moved quickly, passing into the rift. The rift crackled and distorted as each digimon passed into it, but quickly snapped back to-- well. There was no _normal_ here.

A forking bolt of radiant lightning cut through the darkness of the throneroom, but by the time it collided with ancient stone and the blinding light faded, the five digimon were gone. The angel came soaring down, emanating a light that illuminated the walls of this hall in ways they hadn't been for millennia, and her two allies dropped down after her, landing gracefully in the dust.

Jotunmon knew he likely wouldn't have stood a chance in a three-on-one, but he crept closer, keeping to the shadows as he watched. If he had to make a break for it, he knew he could brute-force through them, but he watched carefully, calculating, trying to gauge his options. They, too, seemed to be doing the same.

"We're going to have to follow them," one of the angel's allies said, her voice calm and even.

"It's our only chance. It's not going to last," said the other, tapping his chin, "so call me crazy, but I think we should get a move on it."

"Right," the angel said, nodding once, firmly. "We were prepared for this eventuality."   
The three charged forward, and were swallowed by the rift in turn. The same distortion occurred around them as they were swallowed by the light.

Jotunmon knew he couldn't wait any longer. If he moved quickly, he might still be able to intervene. His claws grew, encased in ice; sleet and snow swirled around him as his feet pounded against the ancient stones, and he threw himself into the rift.

The moment he crossed through, it closed behind him.

Everything was blinding white. He felt like his entire body was being ripped apart-- like the top layer of his entire body was being stripped away, and as soon as it was bare, the next layer and the next layer were stripped away as well. He could see nothing, nothing, nothing--   
And three dark shapes just ahead of him, distorting and shifting and struggling against an invisible force.   
Far further ahead, he could almost -- in the blinding light -- see five smaller, more distant dark shapes.

"Midnight Sun!" Jotunmon roared, and he felt like he was caught in the rapids of an impossibly fast river-- not just because of the feeling of something fast-moving and unforgiving rushing into his mouth as he tried to speak, suffocating him, but also because he had to struggle to pull his weapons from where they hung at his sides. He forced himself, feeling his body begin to rip apart, but he persevered and hurled his twin axes at the three digimon before him.

The axes surged with black energy moments before they struck their targets. They forced themselves away, out of the line of fire, but they seemed to already be changing-- de-digivolving, reverting to smaller forms. He couldn't be sure whether that was the result of his attack, or--?

Jotunmon blacked out.

...

When he came to, he didn't know how long it had been. He tried to move-- and he couldn't feel his body. In truth, he didn't have a body to feel anymore. It was hard to tell if this was better than simply not being able to feel it. He had been reverted back to-- god, it seemed that he had been forced back to his in-training form.

He hadn't opened his eyes, but he could tell was dark, and he was in-- sand? But he heard the sound of machinery in the distance--   
He cracked an eye open, and saw what was to him a quite tall creature crouching very close to him.

He almost immediately began trying to burrow into the sand, using his vestigial arms and blunt claws, but he quickly struck wood.

"Oh, good, you're alive," the creature said, and the little digimon looked up, partially because he was quickly realizing he had nowhere to go. "I was worried, on account of you weren't moving."   
It was... well. He could only assume it was a human. He was guessing it was a young one, judging by how awkwardly small it looked; female. She had bandages plastered on her knees and her hair was choppy and messy, and her clothes looked like they had belonged to someone older and more masculine for quite some time before they had been given to her.

He peered up at her with an unamused expression on his face. He opened his mouth, preparing to say something, and instead he got a mouthful of sand.   
The girl laughed as he spat it out and attempted to brush the sand off his tongue, which only succeeded in getting the sand on his claws into his mouth.

"My name's Lily. What's yours?"

"I'm--" he began, and the girl looked slightly taken aback that she had actually gotten an answer, but she immediately listened with rapt attention. He was aobut to say Jotunmon, but-- that wasn't accurate, was it?   
"Frostmon."

The girl paused, titling her head in thought and puffing out one cheek. "That's a really weird name."

"So is yours," Frostmon said, more than a little defensive. He scowled, but she only seemed to find it funny. He looked around.

"So what're you doin' in my sandbox?"

 

Frostmon wasn't here to make friends. He was here to lay in wait, lie low, until he was needed. He was here to provide the catalyst for the reawakening of the great old god; he was here to ensure that the digital world met the end it had always deserved.

It can be funny how plans change.

 

***

 

_-Present Day-_

As they had expected, the news stations were on fire immediately. It wasn't just the local ones, either-- a simple channel-surf revealed that the incident was a breaking story across the board. The more they watched, the more they knew they couldn't expect anything else. Standing from where they had been, focused on the digimon, it had been easy to miss how bad the damage had been.   
The newscasters all repeated the same information-- mostly that a huge number of people - starting estimates at 50, creeping up to well over 100 as reports rolled in -- had suffered minor injuries. A sizable handful of injuries requiring hospitalization, mostly the result of falling rubble or shock from the impacts, had been reported as well.

" _As of late, no fatalities have been confirmed,_ " the on-the-scene reporter said, standing at the site of the attack. In the background, a crew were trying to excavate the wreckage. " _But rescue workers are still on the scene. We'll keep you abreast of developments. Back to_ \--"

Ryan killed the power to the TV with a push of the remote button.   
"That's all that we needed to hear," he said, sitting down with a heavy sigh.

His apartment was not made, nor furnished, to accomodate nine people.

Natalie was on the couch, carefully wrapping the ice-burn on her leg in a borrowed heated-up hand-towel. Jen sat on the other side of the couch, while Eli sat on the ground immediately in front of the couch. Meghan had co-opted one of Ryan's two (count 'em, two) chairs and was sitting near the kitchen island, which separated the kitchen from the rest of the room and on which Xander was currently perched (because he was Xander). Sam sat on the floor, knees drawn to his chest; Peter sat not far away from Sam, legs crossed. Ryan had gestured vaguely at the only other free chair, doing some vague kind of inviting them to use it, but neither did, and so he took it for himself.

The digimon were staying minimized; those who had required a beating to come back down to their rookie forms were still unconscious, and the other three simply didn't want to try to maneuver such a crowded space-- and, really, such a complex emotional minefield didn't need even more voices to make things more complicated.

So it was that they had nine young adults of varying backgrounds and personal space levels and _varying degrees of tolerance for the others' presence_ in one too-small one-person apartment. This would have been a recipe for disaster on its own; the fact that it came after what might verifiably be called an _actual disaster_ could complicate things.   
Indeed, the tension in the room was palpable. Everyone was still coming down off the adrenaline of the digimon fight, and the sirens in the not-far-enough distance were hard to ignore.

"So, sorry if this comes off a bit rude, buuut... who are you, exactly?" Jen said, looking over at Lily. "We didn't even catch your name," she said, gesturing at Ryan, Eli, and herself.

"And honestly, the rest of us don't have much else aside from that to go on, so, I mean, we're all kind of in the same boat," Sam muttered, but he didn't say it loud enough to really be heard.

Lily, for her part, was a little bit off to the side in the kitchen, staying unincorporated. She glanced over when she was spoken to, and she looked around to see all eyes on her. Even Xander, who had been in the middle of texting someone (read: his bandmates), was looking at her.

"My name's Lily," she said, terse, cautious. "I'm Br--" She stopped herself. "I mean, I'm... _Draugmon_ 's partner."   
There was a short silence as that sunk in. They had all been filled in on that much, and indeed, more than one of them had theorized about Draugmon having a partner at all, but it was only now starting to feel real.

"... well, that's rough," Eli said, breaking the silence with a flat, frank assessment.

" _There's_ an understatement," Peter said, shaking his head and frowning.

A quick round of introductions rippled through the gathering; Natalie had already introduced herself by name, but the others hadn't yet had the chance.

"We'd introduce you to our digimon," Meghan said, rubbing at the back of her head, "but..." _But, you know, they're all kind of exhausted and-or just got the shit kicked out of them, so they're a bit out of commission._

"It's alright. I understand. Trust me, I understand," Lily said, shaking her head. She sighed, putting her hands halfway in her pockets.   
"I'm sorry to intrude on--" she paused, and looked up, around at the motley lot of gathered people and tried to get a read on the room; it didn't go so well. "... whatever the hell this collection of people and relationships is? No offense."

"Better not to ask," Ryan said quickly, glancing sidelong at Natalie, who did not meet his eye. (Lily made a quick internal note that she would absolutely have to ask at some point.)

"The exact nature of it is kind of ephemeral, really," Peter said, adjusting his glasses.

"... or, in fuckin' English: we're not sure what's going on half the time, either," Xander cut in. Peter pressed his lips together but didn't contest this.

"I _did_ kind of wonder," Lily said, leaning back against the kitchen counter she was standing by. "I wasn't expecting..." She paused as she realized she didn't know any of the names of the digimon. "I wasn't expecting the angel, red panda, and the fox to be helping," she gestured, "everyone else, from what I know from Brockmon told me. Is this a new development?"

A moment passed where glances were exchanged, as nobody could quite succinctly answer that.

"Before anyone answers that," Natalie said after a moment, looking over at Lily, "what exactly _do_ you know?"

Truth be told, _everyone_ was curious to hear whatever it was that Lily had to say-- she was someone with a D-Rive who had thus far flown under the radar. Pile that on top of the fact that Ratamon had seemed quite interested in her and her partner...

Well, come on. Anything she had to say was going to be interesting, if nothing else.

Lily shifted her weight a bit uncomfortably, and sighed through her nose. "That's fair. I can't explain it very well without Brockmon around, but..." But calling him out to back her up wasn't an option.

"Go ahead with whatever you _can_ tell us, then," Ryan said, gesturing to imply that the floor was hers.

She nodded a couple times and took a deep breath.   
"I got this-- thing," she said, and she held up her D-Rive; hers was pitch-black, both front and back, "back in May. I'm going to take a wild guess and guess that's when everyone else got theirs as well?" Indeed, everyone nodded. "Brockmon didn't know what it was, but we -- he, really -- figured out pretty soon it was digimon-related."

Lily turned her D-Rive over in her hand as she paused, trying to think of how to word what she meant to say. "He wanted to keep his head down," she said. "From the get go he wanted to keep his head down and stay out of things, and when Ratamon started showing up... Well. He said that as long as Ratamon didn't find him, things wouldn't escalate, and that the others would be able to handle things. _I_ was on board with it, because honestly, I didn't want to deal with any of this shit. Not really my steeze, you know?" She smiled thinly, without humour. "But... I donno. As time went on and the incidents started getting worse I was kind of confused as to how he considered all of this acceptable collateral damage. He always just said it could always get worse."

It had, indeed, gotten worse; her smile faded. She paused, and was quite aware that all eyes were on her, and she re-gathered her thoughts into a coherent order.

"I think I need to back up. See, when I met Brockmon years and years ago, he told me that he was waiting for someone. He's always kind of refused to talk about it in detail, but he always said that someday, another monster would appear, and when that monster appeared, he -- Brockmon -- was going to come out of hiding and meet with them, that he'd be fulfilling some important role, that he was going to be the catalyst for something important."

A heavy silence fell for a moment.

"So Ratamon was looking for Brockmon because he's... like, a trigger?" Meghan said slowly, tilting her head.

"Sounds like it," Sam said, furrowing his brow.

...

Man, _fuck_ Ratamon.

"But Brockmon... Brockmon changed his mind," Lily said, shaking her head. "I don't know when or how, but he was really resolute about staying hidden and keeping Ratamon in the dark. He said he wanted to lay low, but I think it might have been starting to get to him. He started getting really paranoid. He was jumping at every shadow and wanted to check my D-Rive all the time. I thought he was overreacting at first, but-- I don't know. I guess he had a reason to be worried," she said with a humorless smile, shuddering slightly -- involuntarily -- at the too-recent memory of Draugmon.

The room was very quiet.

"... so I guess that's my end of the story," Lily said once that had all had a chance to sink in. "Do what you will with that information. Or don't. Your choice." She folded her arms and kind of withdrew backwards, shrugging one shoulder. "That's all I've got."

"Well, _that's_ great," Ryan said sarcastically, massaging his temple as he leaned back on his chair.

"What's great?" Natalie said, feeling a little bit of frustration well up in her. She was trying, really she was, but something about Ryan's condescending tone just set her on edge.

Ryan folded his arms. "She took Brockmon back, right? That's what we saw when we showed up?"

"Right," Natalie said, and Ryan continued.

"So if what she's saying is true, the chances of Ratamon coming back are a certainty. Look how well his showing up went tonight. No offense, but if he can force-evolve your digimon then that turns two thirds of the people who can deal with digimon into a liability."

"Hey, in fairness," Sam said, "he only force-evolved everyone because _you_ showed up. I mean, not saying it would have gone better if you hadn't, but, you know, it may have involved less murderbeasts."

"We showed up because we were asked to," Jen said, and even though she was sitting, she put her hands on her hips in defiance.

"Right," Ryan said, tilting his head to gesture at Natalie. "Nat--"

"Don't call me 'Nat'."

Ryan ignored her. "-- Texted me saying there was shit going down and they needed backup."

Xander, Meghan, Sam, and Peter alike all looked to Natalie. They didn't look-- _judging_ , but she could tell that they were all surprised by this. They had been helping each other out recently, but it still felt weird-- especially for Natalie.

"I thought you hated his guts," Xander said with his usual level of tact and subtlety.

"Hell, _I_ hate his guts," Sam provided.

"Gee, thanks," Ryan said flatly.   
(Sam replied with a just-as-flat _you're welcome_.)

"It's not about my feelings about Ryan," Natalie said, folding her arms and sinking back into the couch. She sounded like she was saying words she believed, but that she didn't want to. "It's about... trying to minimize the damage done. For all the good that did, but, you know, hindsight," she said, dropping her eyes.

"It would have been significantly worse," Lily said, cutting in, "if they hadn't shown up. I don't really want to know what Ratamon would have been willing to do if he hadn't wanted to duck out of dealing with their digimon."

Somehow, this didn't assuage Natalie's lingering guilt. There was still a lot of damage, a lot of people injured-- how much of that had just been from Draugmon, and how much of it had been from the second wave?   
(But what _would_ Ratamon have done if he hadn't been interrupted? Exactly how strong he was was hard to discern, and if he had the power to force-evolve digimon, then...   
Really, what even _was_ Ratamon? Sure, Shitomon and her party had vaguely guessed he was some kind of messenger for that yet-unnamed corruption, but...?)

"I mean-- it's not like it's your fault," Meghan said slowly, and she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. "Like--?" She paused, frowning and looking around for backup.

Xander shrugged one shoulder. "Fucked if I know, man. Knowing what we do about ratfuck," (a snort of laughter from several of those gathered), "who can fuckin' say it wouldn't have gone worse if the cavalry _hadn't_ shown up? Might've gone sunshine and roses. Might've been worse. Ether way it isn't worth sitting around wondering about what-if shit."

"Word to that," Eli said, pressing back against the front of the couch and letting his head fall back against it.

Natalie still couldn't say she felt much better about any of this, but she didn't see any value in belaboring the point right now, so she nodded with a heavy sigh.

"So, that actually brings me back to my original question. I realize Brockmon's information was a bit outdated, but I wasn't exactly expecting your digimon --" she gestured at Ryan, Eli, and Jen, "-- to exactly be on the refugees' best-buddy list. Are you working together now or something?"   
(Apparently, _refugees_ was just the accepted term.)

"Extenuating circumstances," Jen said simply.

Peter glanced over. "Which means what, exactly? You've been very vague about that."

"... do all of you not know what's going on, either?" Lily asked of nobody in particular as a murmur of disagreements and _I swore we told you about that_ rippled through the group.

"We're... _really_ bad at getting everyone on the same page. It's kind of a problem," Meghan said, sounding more than a little defeated as she half-turned around to address Lily directly.

"I can see that."

"I propose," Natalie said, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the low murmur, "we remedy that."

No time like the present. Indeed, no time like the inauguration of a ninth -- and they prayed, final -- D-Rive holder. (Yes, for those curious-- this was the extent of it. There were no D-Rives that weren't presently in this apartment. Rest easy in this knowledge.)   
Through a series of conversations and arguments and interruptions (that -- trust me -- would be infinitely confusing to follow if written out, full of people talking over each other and repeating points and disagreeing and arguing and generally talking as people do), Lily managed to discern the following:

The refugee digimon had lost their memories; the three digimon following them had not.   
She was treated to a quick recap of their clashes (which involved a _whole lot of vocal disagreement_ over what any given sequence of events had been, who had started what fight, and who had been the bigger jerk). She was filled in that as soon as Draugmon had appeared, stronger emergent digimon had been emerging, and that ever time a refugee digimon evolved, it had gone pear-shaped.   
This had led to the conclusion that the catalyst had already been activated, which had led to the very tentative ceasefire, as the three's goal had been from 'keep the corruption from reawakening' to 'attempt damage control now that it's already reawakened'.

Lily wondered what kind of clusterfuck mess she had been missing. She stood, taking in everything and listening close, taking mental notes, trying to keep track of who was who and partnered with whom.

"The point," Eli said in summary, spreading his hands out, "is that if the dormant corruption in the refugees has already been activated, then it's a _bit_ too late to try and eliminate the corruption _before it's activated_."

"Yeah, that," Jen said with a decisive nod, "and we'd rather have the allies if it comes to that."

Well, that seemed sound enough, and who could argue with that?

One guess.

Xander snorted, drawing attention to himself. "Yeah, okay, I just have one problem with this," he said. He couldn't keep quiet any longer-- and he had already exercised remarkable restraint in waiting this long to speak up.   
"Working together for emergences, fine, I get that. Whatever. I ain't gonna turn down help. But tell me, why exactly are you acting like you're doing us a favor here? Just because _you've_ decided to stop attempting to kill our partners doesn't mean we're going to be like, hey, yeah, _let's disregard that time a couple weeks ago when you tried to kill our partners,_ we totally accept your BFF application."

Hm.

Peter heaved a heavy sigh. "I don't exactly agree with his phrasing--"

"Thanks, I don't care."

Peter went on as though he wasn't interrupted. "But even though I might have put it another way, I agree with Xander." Xander looked slightly, albeit pleasantly, taken aback. "While I'm sure we all appreciate your help, it's kind of troubling that you're assuming we're all in agreement with you, just because _you_ agreed on it."

"I mean, being totally fair, considering what little we _do_ know for sure about your partners' histories," Ryan said, glancing around, "I think it's more than fair as a _quid pro quo_. It's less of a magnanimous assimilating you into us, and kind of a temporary truce."

Sam snorted; he was still looking at his phone and not the others. "Full offense, but considering we were never actively firing at you in the first place, it's not a truce, it's just _you not shooting at us anymore_. I mean, still great, we really appreciate you helping us out sometimes, but I'm not really sure why you're acting like we should feel grateful."

"I know we don't all know the details for certain or anything," Jen said, tilting her head, "but, you know. There's the whole thing about your partners being criminals on the lam who harbored the corruption. We weren't exactly starting on equal moral footing, yanno?"

"I'd say the fact that we don't know the details is kind of a big weak spot in that argument," Natalie said, folding her arms.

"But we're supposed to be the good guys," Ryan snapped back at Natalie, exasperation clear in his voice. The words seemed to have come out of his mouth before he had... really thought through them, but they was out there now, and he couldn't take them back.   
Eli and Jen both had the expressions of people who agreed, but who maybe thought [it didn't have to be said out loud](http://recon.digimonreset.com/images/true.jpg), where everyone else wasn't quite sure how to respond to that.

"Ha ha _wow_ fuck you," Xander said in a barking laugh.

"That's not what I meant," Ryan said, but it was too late, and he hissed through his teeth, running his hand backwards through his hair. "I meant-- shit."

"Hey, you heard it here first: we're the _bad guys_ ," Sam said sardonically.

"Yeah, I mean, _we've_ only been trying to keep shit from getting out of hand," Xander said, "as opposed to running around trying to murder other peoples' friends when there's obviously more at work than _hey we've got the murder signal 15 years late_ , and then acting like it's a great act of magnanimous charity when you realize that there _is_ something else going on. Clearly you've got moral high ground."

"That's not what I meant," Ryan said again, more forcefully, his frustration apparent.

"Then what _did_ you mean?" Natalie prompted, arms folded. Her diplomacy was wearing thin, even though she was trying her damndest not to start any fights.

Ryan hissed through his teeth. "I just _meant_ that if it _hadn't_ gotten this far, I think it'd be ureasonable to assume that our digimon would be on the--" He emphasized words throughout his little diatribe not only with his voice, but with hand gestures as well. He struggled to find a way to not say _the good guys_ or _the good side_ , because he didn't need to dig that hole any deeper.

"Considering our digimon's job when they first came here, it makes sense that it's _also_ their -- our -- job to continue to do what's best for everyone," Jen added in, shrugging her shoulders. "But, yanno. Whatever."

"... why do you think it's your job?" Lily spoke and people looked to her, even though she wasn't speaking loudly. "I mean, not to sound rude. It's a legitimate question. Why exactly do you think this is a job you were given?"

"Because we have--" Eli began, but he cut himself off. He was going to say, because they had D-Rives, but he realized before he even said it that it wouldn't hold even the slightest bit of water, considering that everyone in this room was in possession of just such a device. "Hm. ... hm. Can I get back to you on that?"

"I'm _assuming_ you were going to mention these things," Lily admitted, turning her D-Rive over in her hand, "I don't know for sure what these are for-- maybe one of you has worked that out and just declined to tell me. I'm out of the loop. But for what it's worth, from a relative outsider's perspective, they seem pretty important in all of this to me. I mean, if all of us have them, _and_ you think they're evidence of us having a job to do, then I'd think we'd all have the same job." She shrugged.

"... I mean, let's be real, the D-Rives are kind of the biggest gap in our knowledge base," Sam said, rubbing the back of his head. "I sure don't know shit about how they work, except for the fact that they _do_ work. Fucked if we even know why we have them."

"Now that I think about it, though, Ratamon doesn't seem to know what to make of them, either," Natalie said slowly, thinking-- he had just tonight hissed something about _what are those things_. "And if he'd known what they could do, I don't know if he'd have given me it back when he stole mine."

"At least there's that," Peter muttered. "Anything Ratamon knows that we don't seems to spell disaster for us, so at least he doesn't have _that_ up on us."

"I mean," Meghan said, scratching her nose. "Considering they can do that thing where they like-- kind of seem to quarantine the corruption, wasn't that what Sam said?"

"Hold up, they can do what?" Eli said, raising an eyebrow.

 

***

Even as they began to discuss the D-Rives (which was mostly Eli and Sam exchanging notes a little bit tersely), the tension never quite recovered after Ryan's comment about being _the good guys_. It was nearly eleven o' clock by the time they started filtering out, and it felt like nobody was leaving happy or feeling any more secure about the state of affairs, but they had at least avoided a straight-up fight.   
That was going to have to count as a victory.

Or at least as progress.

Natalie was the last one to leave-- not because she had any particular desire to be around Ryan for longer than she had to, but because she was busy wringing out into the sink the warm, damp towel that she had been using to wrap her cold-burned leg. Even in the short amount of time that the icy hands had been in contact with her bare skin, they had caused a fair bit of damage, and it was hard to tell what was discolouration because of the freezing, and which was discolouration because of the icy grip leaving bruises.

"Just-- here, I'll take care of that," Ryan said, shaking his head. Shitomon, who had materialized as soon as the apartment had cleared out, was being uncharacteristically quiet. She stood watching from the other side of the kitchen island, peering around it.

"It's... thanks," Natalie said, shaking her head and handing it off. She hesitated, not yet moving to the door. The awkwardness hung in the air heavy and stagnant, and she chose to break it rather than let it linger any longer.   
"... what was it you wanted to talk about the other day? You never got back to me about that."

And then a _really_ awkward pause ensued. Ryan didn't immediately answer.

"I think we mostly covered it with our discussion here," he said after a just-barely-too-long silence. He paused, then groaned. "Look, Nat--"

"Stop calling me Nat," Natalie said, feeling an almost-reflexive negative reaction to the nickname.

"Fine, _Natalie_ , are you happy now?" Ryan spat, instinctively defensive, then he paused, groaning as he massaged his temples. "Fuck. Look. I know you hate me. I get it."

"Forgive me if I don't entirely believe that you do," Natalie said, frowning and looking to the side. She debated whether or not she minded that Shitomon was overhearing all of this. Ultimately, anything she said was going to get back to the little rabbit-thing anyway, just as anything Ryan said would get back to Raumon, so she decided it wouldn't matter. "You've never actually apologized for, like, literally anything."

"I've _tried_ ," Ryan said, "and every time you just act like I've spit in your face."

"No, you've _tried_ to find a way to make everything my fault, or getting passive aggressive with me for not wanting to talk to you," Natalie said back, trying very hard to keep an even tone, "or digimon business gets in the way. I don't blame you for that last one, but, you know, it doesn't help."

Ryan folded his arms, sighing. "I just wanted to ask if you could put aside the fact that you hate me for the sake of digimon shit. That's all I was going to ask, and, hey, considering you actually deigned to ask for our help, I figure you can. Cool. Thanks. I feel great now."   
Could you try to sound a little more bitter?

Natalie looked over at him for a moment as she gathered her thoughts.

"... look, Ryan, if we have to be on civil terms to deal with digimon stuff in each other's vicinity, that's fine. I can grit my teeth and do that. Thanks for your help earlier tonight. I mean that. But knowing you, gritting teeth in each others' vicinities isn't really what you want." The slightly guilty expression that graced Ryan's face for just a split second confirmed her suspicion. "Stop me if I'm wrong, but I think you want to be friends again."   
He did not stop her, and she gathered all her nerves and forced herself to keep talking. "But... if you're not even going to try to actually genuinely apologize, then... sorry, but that's not going to happen."

The silence was heavy for a few seconds.

"Ouch," Ryan said, rubbing the back of his head.

"Yeah," Natalie said slowly, shifting her weight uncomfortably. It felt like there was something else left to be said, and this time, at least, Ryan didn't wait until the pause was awkward.

"You all got pissed at me for saying it, but... fuck, you all think you're the _good guys_ too, though. I know you do," he said, wringing the towel even though it had no more water left to give.

"Kind of hard to believe that when our partners have been wrecking everything in sight," Natalie said, rubbing her arm nervously. She glanced over at Shitomon, and the little rabbit-angel's expression was hard to read, but it didn't seem unsympathetic.

"Yeah, but you know what I mean."

And that cut straight to the heart of so much of what had been bothering Natalie, and she was furious that it was Ryan of all people who said it.   
Of course she -- all of them -- wanted to dig in their heels and find a way where they were all on the same side, where they were doing the right thing despite all evidence to the contrary and all the damage and everything else.

Natalie sighed. "I mean, everyone wants to think they did the best they could have done. Nobody wants to dig in their heels and then turn out to be wrong."

Again, an awkward and heavy moment followed.

"Right," Ryan said, setting the towel down and sighing. "Yeah. Have a good night."

Natalie nodded and saw herself out, feeling remarkably proud of herself for having maintaned her composure, even if she was shaking a little bit.   
As she walked down to the street, she looked around; it was dark, but the streetlamps and the moon, just barely a waxing gibous, provided ample enough light. Sirens were still going off in the distance, but it looked like just about everybody had already cleared out.   
Just about everyone, anyway-- lingering near the stairs, such that Natalie almost ran into her, was Lily.

"Oh-- sorry," Natalie said, readjusting from almost crashing into the other girl.

"Was wondering when you'd be out, but didn't want to creep," Lily said. "I just wanted to thank you."

Natalie blinked a couple times, still trying to recalibrate her head after her little conversation with Ryan. "What for?"

Lily raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her. "For helping me earlier. For helping Brockmon. You didn't have to make your partner evolve like that, or help distract Ratamon, or call in the," she paused, looking up in the direction of Ryan's apartment, "cavalry, let's say-- which I maintain was a good choice."

"I can't really take the credit for any of that except the last part," Natalie said, shaking her head. "It's ultimately Raumon's choice to evolve, and it was everyone else who distracted Ratamon, so I mean." She shrugged one shoulder, smiling.

"Learn to take a compliment, girl," Lily said, rolling her eyes, but she smiled faintly. "Take some credit where it's due, come on, what's wrong with you?" She shrugged her shoulders, and leaned against the dusty plaster wall. "Also I figure I ought to find out a way to keep in contact. I don't want to go through another couple months of wondering who the heck any of you people are."

"Makes sense," Natalie said, smiling faintly, and the two quickly exchanged contact information. "I can't even imagine what the past few weeks have been like for you," she said as she hit the _save_ button on her screen, looking up at Lily.

"It's been rough, but what can you do," Lily said, shrugging. Natalie got the distinct feeling there was a lot more to it than that, but having just met this girl tonight, she knew better than to start prying. "I'm sure he'll have a lot to share," she said, looking at her D-Rive with a sigh.

"No kidding," Natalie said, frowning. "Ratamon's going to be back soonner than later, I'd bet money on it."

"Guess Brockmon'd better get used to-- what did you call it?"

"Minimizing," Natalie provided.

"Right. That's like, one of the few things we worked out about these things, but he preferred just staying at home, so..." Lily said, then paused. That was, after all, what had gotten them into so much trouble.

"You get used to having them with you every moment of every day, honestly," Natalie said with a smile, feeling into her pocket where her own D-Rive was; she couldn't deny that it almost felt like a security blanket.

"I'm sure," Lily said, huffing a little laugh, cradling her D-Rive in her hands. "I'm glad he's back," she said, more to herself than anything. She looked back up at Natalie. "Anyway. I'll see you, I'm sure."

Natalie nodded and waved as Lily took off.

Natalie let go of a breath she wasn't entirely aware that she'd been holding, and she felt a weight fall off her shoulders.

 

***

Ryan sighed. He couldn't relax, every part of the evening -- from monster fights to now -- playing on repeat in his mind. He stood at the sink, doing what few dishes he had, just because he needed to be doing _something_ with his hands, and since he was already standing there...   
Shitomon was sitting on the kitchen island, watching her partner and lost in her own mind in turn.

"You know," Ryan said; setting down a glass that he'd washed for the fourth time, "I think my life would be a lot easier if I were a little better at not constantly shoving my foot into my mouth every time I opened it, but here we are."

It wasn't like he was sitting here beating himself up, feeling like he was _totally wrong the whole time_. He still felt like his logic was at least understandable.

"It's a gift we both have, I suppose," Shitomon said, shaking her head. She stayed quiet for a moment, listening to the sound of the city outside. She frowned and scratched her head. "At least we got things under control tonight-- at least on the digimon side of things."

 

"At least there's that," Ryan said, sighing. "At least you did a good job of that."

Shitomon smiled, a little bit bittersweet.

 

***

"How many unread messages you got from she who must be obeyed now?" Xander asked; since he had gotten to the (now very trashed) concert with his bandmates, she had driven him back to his place, and they were killing a bit of time. In true _refusing to sit on things like a normal person_ fashion, Xander was sitting on Meghan's car's hood, with Meg herself standing right in front of him.

See, it wasn't even that Meg hadn't texted her mother saying she was alright, because it had been just about the first thing she _had_ done the moment they had gotten away from the scene of the fight, but that didn't stop--

"Fifteen," Meghan said, dread and resignation in her voice.

Xander snorted. "If you want to crash here instead of walking back into the belly of the WASP beast, you're welcome to. I won't even try any weird shit," he ammended the last last part immediately, but it didn't stop Meghan from flushing a rather amazing shade of fuschia that was immediately evident even in the low light.

"My mom would _skin me_."

"Consider that she's probably going to do that anyway," Xander retorted, and at that exact moment Meghan's phone went off, and Xander quirked an eyebrow. "Sixteen unread messages."

Meghan thought for a moment, considering very seriously, but eventually, she just sighed heavily. "While I appreciate the offer, I'd rather just go home and get it over with. I don't want to worry her more than she already is. She might, like, blow a blood vessel or something, you know?"

Xander rolled his eyes. "Eh. _I_ think that'd be funny, but it's probably not worth the argument."

"Get off my car, I've gotta go home," Meghan said, sticking her tongue out. She was more than exhausted, and she really did just want to get home and the inevitable drama over with, and more importantly, make sure Oremon was okay.

Xander snorted, slipping off the hood. What he wasn't entirely expecting was for Meghan to dip in, stand on tiptoes, and press a quick kiss to his lips; he was not, however, complaining.

"Night," she said as she circled back around to her driver's side door.

"Yeah," he said, lifting a hand as her engine roared to life. "Night."

As Meghan drove away, a blue light flashed, and Desmon -- very exhausted, very beat up, only half clinging to consciousness, but still Desmon -- was clinging to his back like a backpack.

"Not a _word_ , you overweight mood-killing winged chihuahua."

 

"Ha ha. Gross."

Xander didn't even bother trying to minimize Desmon again, even if she was a massive pain in the ass to carry as he hauled her up the stairs with her ever-so-innocently wondering out loud if _anyone_ would be so magnanimous as to let her have the leftover lo mein in the fridge.

 

***

Sam groaned as he fell into his computer chair with an exhausted exhale. He was alone in the house, so he had nobody to answer to for showing up this late. Even if he had, he would have made the same beeline to his room anyway.

He kicked his shoes off and set his D-Rive on his desk, then began the search for a bottle of water with enough left in it to swallow pills down with. He dosed out a healthy number of painkillers in addition to his normal medication, tossing the pills into his mouth and washing them down before he had a chance to taste them. By the time he tilted his head back down, Gelermon had, with her typical flash of green light, materialized next to his chair in a quadrupedal stance, looking like she had seen better days.

"If you start working on anything that isn't sleeping," she said, peering up at him, "so help me god, I'm going to eat every last one of your hats. I will go full wild dog 'it would have done less damage if you'd put them through a wood chipper'. Don't test me."

"But--"

" _Every single one of your hats, Sam._ "

 

He couldn't argue with that, and even though it took a colossal effort -- after all, he had just sat down -- he shoved himself up and over the, like, three feet to his bed, and flopped over gracelessly. Gelermon leapt up onto the bed alongside him, curling up at the foot.

"How long have you been conscious again?" Sam asked, glancing down at her.

"A while. Donno for sure, kind of hard to keep track in there," she said with a pointed look at Sam's D-Rive. "I heard part of the conversation, at least, so you won't have to fill me in on everything."

"Thank god," Sam said.

Really, he hadn't realized how tired he was until he laid down; he had been all ready to power through and sort through some footage and information, but now that he had stopped, he could already feel himself fading. In short order, he was out cold.

 

***

"At least you got some good out of it, huh?" Hulimon said, peering over Eli's shoulder. "Finally got to compare some D-Rive notes with what's-his-name."

"Yeah, except for the fact that every new piece of information just makes everything, like, five thousand times more complicated," Eli said. Hulimon was piggybacking on him as he went down the stairs, heading down into his basement room.

"Such is the way," Hulimon said in a faux-cheerful tone, and he jumped off of Eli's back as they reached the bottom of the stairs. He wavered slightly, and debated that maybe jumping off was a bit of a bad idea. "I've known for years that every single thing I stick my nose in makes everything a lot more complicated. That's what makes it fun."

"You have a really weird definition of 'fun'," Eli said with a wry smirk.

"Need I remind you," Hulimon said, grinning a bit wider than normal, "about the zamboni?"

"... you know what? That's fair. And also partially your fault."

"Tomayto, tomahto," Hulimon said, handwaving it away, and then he paused and looked around the dimly-lit room. "You gotta think it's fun," he said, shrugging as he set his bag aside. "If it's all going to shit anyway, you may as well make the most of it, you know?"

 

"Yeah, I feel you."

 

***

"Hey," Peter said as he pushed open the door to his flat. The lights were on, and the TV was chattering away; even if he couldn't see his roommate, he was definitely present, since he wasn't working tonight.

"Damn, you're not dead yet. I guess I lose the betting pool," Ian's voice drifted from the kitchen area.

"Not for lack of trying," Peter said coolly, rubbing the back of his head. "It's been kind of a long night."

"No fucking kidding, dude," Ian said, coming around the partial wall separating the living room from the kitchen. "It's been everywhere. At this point I just assume that if some monster-related emergency comes up, it's gonna have something to do with you."

"Thanks, I think," Peter said flatly as he dropped onto the couch. Without warning, Ian beaned him in the forehead with an orange. "What the fuck was that for?"

"First of all, it's for making me deal with _really_ awkward questions from your mom," he said, and when Peter raised an eyebrow, he elaborated, "you weren't answering your phone, so she called me. Second of all: it's for Banmon."

"Christ," Peter muttered, rubbing his forehead before he began to tear the peel off of the orange. "What did my mother want?"   
In a flash of light, Banmon appeared on the couch next to Peter. She looked... disheveled, her bandages hanging a bit looser than normal. As Peter handed off a segment of orange to her, she mumble-squeaked a very quiet _thank you_ , pulling down the scarf-like gathering of fabric around her face so she could put it in--

Well. Where her mouth would be.

"She was convinced she saw you in the shitstorm hellscape on the news, my dude," Ian said. "I'm going to take a wild guess and assume you still haven't told her about Banmon?"

"There's a great many things I don't tell my mother," Peter said frankly, shrugging one shoulder as he handed another orange segment to his digimon partner.

 

"Yeah, I figured, so I played dumb," Ian said, shaking his head and leaning against the wall. "I don't think she bought it. But you ought to like, explain your shit to her sooner or later. It was really fucking awkward." Beat. "She was worried, dude."

Peter could only imagine, and he sighed heavily, focusing on the mechanical process of ripping peel off of the orange to hand to Banmon instead of dwelling on that. "Yeah. Sorry about that. I'll figure something out when I don't feel like the walking dead."   
Ian accepted that and went back to what he was doing when he had been interrupted (making himself a sandwich), leaving them alone agian.

"You doing okay?" Peter said, looking over at Banmon.

"I've probably been worse?" she said after a moment, and Peter sighed, gently placing a hand on her hooded head.   
"I still don't like all this fighting."

"I know."

 

***

Meghan crept in through the back door and into a mostly-dark house, and she felt like every step she took, she was risking stepping on a booby trap that would cause all the lights to explode to life.   
No such thing happened. She got all the way to the top of the stairs and spied the light in her mother's bedroom on, and she sighed, preparing herself.

The entire front hall lit up for a split second with a flash of brilliant orange as a very harried looking Oremon appeared next to her. She nearly jumped, but she was in sneak mode deep enough that she managed to contain it.

"You might want to just get to my room," Meghan said in a hushed voice, glancing over at him. "This is probably gonna suck."

"Moral support," Oremon said gruffly, shaking his head once.

"You've been through enough tonight," she said, frowning.

"And you haven't?"

 

... okay, fair enough.

The two of them still crept as quietly as they could, and they exchanged looks and heavy sighs before Meghan rapped her knuckles on the half-ajar door.

 

***

Natalie didn't go straight home. She was sore and limping and tired, but she knew where she had to go first.

The late-August summer night hung heavy and thick, and the wind rustled through the leaves of the trees that surrounded the stream in the park. That was the only noise as she walked up to the bridge, hands in her pockets.

The purple light of Raumon's re-emergence flickered off the water. He hadn't materialized on the drive back here, and she didn't expect him to, but she couldn't help but feel a little bit of relief as he solidified next to her.

"Thanks," he said, sounding tired but entirely genuine.

"Sorry about all of that," she said, leaning forward on the railing of the bridge.

"It's fine. It all worked out as well as it could have," he said, "and I'll count that as a victory." He paused, looking up at her. "I know my opinion is biased," he said after a moment, "but I think you did the right thing. Overall. In general."

 

"You're very biased," she said, but she couldn't _not_ smile. "But thank you." She leaned down and ruffled the feathers on his head.

After all the hectic bullshit of tonight, they just took a moment to enjoy the flow of the river and the quiet of the night.

 

***

Jen flopped down on her bed, face-down.   
"Christ, I'm ready to never have a night like that ever again, yeah?" she said, muffled, into a pillow.

 

Lurumon nodded her assent, but said nothing. She was sitting down cross-legged on the foot of Jen's bad; her long tail wrapped around her legs and the red panda rested her hands on her knees, her eyes closed and her breathing steady. Jen's dropping onto the bed and talking to her didn't seem to perturb her at all.

Jen sighed and smiled a bit. Lurumon had been trying for the past few months to get Jen to learn how to meditate. It wasn't going to work -- Jen had a hard enough time getting her mouth to stay shut when she had an opinion or a thought most of the time, let alone get her brain to be quiet, but she admired the little digimon's attempts.   
Maybe she should really give it a shot. She got the feeling she might be able to use it in future.

 

***

Lily opened the door to her apartment. It was still kind of a mess, but... She had to manually materialize Brockmon, because he was still out cold -- no pun intended -- so she knew she had a little while to get things in order before he woke up.

With Brockmon situated comfortably on the old beat-up couch, she finally set to picking things up, something she couldn't have been assed to do at all in the past few weeks. She kept the curtains drawn, the window locked, and her D-Rive on hand as she did, but her small and cluttered apartment finally didn't feel inexplicably too damn big and too damn empty anymore, and frankly, she'd take that.

 

 

***

Ratamon grumbled to himself. He sat on the rim of the massive cracked canyon, and yes, if he wanted to pout and be a little upset before he got back to work, he was going to be upset and pout a little, dammit. He sighed grumpily, resting his chin on one hand.

He had lost track of Draugmon for _one goddamn minute_ (okay, maybe a bit more, but you get the point), and everything had cascaded out of control. He had lost the catalyst-- and with that, he had lost a lot of security. Who knew what he would tell them?   
The outliers had shown up, and he'd rather run to see another day than try to deal with them himself... maybe the refugees would have sorted them out.

It was a bit of wishful thinking, he knew.   
Admittedly, he had never really stuck around to see how they had brought their so-called partners back down out of a cataylst digivolution, but he _was_ willing to blame more and more of his problems on those stupid little devices. Maybe he should have stolen that purple one for good when he had borrowed it, instead of handing it back, but it was entirely too late for that.

Dammit all.

 

He couldn't rely on the refugees having solved the problem; he had to treat the catalyst as though it were lost. Which... _mechanically_ , that was fine. It was awake again. He didn't need to wake it up any more than he already had.   
But he didn't know what that stupid badger would tell them.

And _that_ was a problem. The angel's group, they knew _some_ , but he felt like he could rest easy in the knowledge that idiot-king Dinmon didn't see fit to tell his pawns even half of the truth. Brockmon, though... Brockmon had been privy to much more, information that posed a much bigger threat to this plan going off without a hitch.

This _all_ would have gone so much easier if those stupid digimon -- all of them -- had just _done what they were supposed to do_. He supposed he only had the humans to blame for that. They were turning out to be quite the spanner in the works. He'd been an idiot to underestimate them, but he wasn't about to make that mistake again. If the catalyst was already lost, then he was going to take the time to do this right.

Which, really, was fine by him. Time was something he was about to have a whole lot more of.


	23. Episode 23: Point/Counterpoint

If anyone had been hoping for a peaceful week of downtime with no digimon incidents in the aftermath of Draugmon's defeat, they were going to be sorely disappointed.

 _One champion emergent, southwest. got it covered,_ the message from Peter sat read in the chat late on Saturday afternoon-- or really, early on Saturday evening. Either way, it was an acknowledgement of the emergent, that it was being taken care of, that anyone who _wanted_ was welcome to jump in on it if they happened to be around.   
This was the sixth emergence since the incident last Saturday night-- they had only barely avoided one emergent a day. August was _finally_ on its last legs; it had felt like this month had lasted a half a year with everything that had happened.

With the uneasy peace between the main group and Ryan's group (even though nobody was quite over his _we're supposed to be the good guys_ bit) and the rapid pace of issues that needed dealing with, the actual _dealing with them_ had quickly become a simple matter of whoever was closest and available in whatever combinations they could muster. If they happened to run into Ryan, Eli, or Jen at any of the incidents... well, the more the merrier. More important than anyone's feelings about each other was the imperative to take care of the feral emergents quickly, before anyone could get hurt or anything was too badly-damaged; sightings by "civilians", such as they were, had been sparse. With eight people scattered around Atlas Park, their coverage was decent.

And it was indeed eight, and not nine. Though Lily had shown herself, she had still yet to actually participate in any digimon incidents.

Truth be told, she was starting to feel a bit self-conscious about it.

Lily sighed heavily as she scrolled through the past messages in the group chat on the walk up to her apartment. Natalie had added her to the chat, but she had thus far avoided saying anything in it. She'd gone full-on lurker.   
Admittedly, she felt she had a _reason_ for not getting involved in any digimon fights thus far. Namely, Brockmon was only now truly recovering. After a tearful reunion when he'd woken up on Sunday afternoon (he had stayed unconscious through the morning), the badger had been not exactly in peak condition. 'Not in peak condition', in this context, meant _wasn't able to move at anything more than a glacial pace without being hit with a tidal wave of pain and nausea_.

Any time that he wasn't immediately in Lily's line of sight, sitting next to her on the couch or on her bed, he was minimized; he couldn't afford to stay out, not now, not when Ratamon knew where he was. (Because being minimized seemed to dull his discomfort, this wasn't the _worst_ possible outcome, so he might have elected to have done this anyway.)

Still-- just knowing Brockmon was back was a peace of mind that Lily had been sorely missing.

A swirl of black not-quite-light accompanied Brockmon's materializing as Lily closed her apartment door.   
"Still nothing?" he asked, looking up at her.

He didn't mean to imply that digimon emergences were _nothing_. Rather, what he was interested in was any sign of Ratamon.

The fact that the little white digimon hadn't shown his face all week was no comfort at all-- in fact, it put everyone, Brockmon especially, on significantly more edge.

"Just another digimon showing up and wrecking things," Lily said, shaking her head.

"Hmph," Brockmon mumbled, shaking his head. "I'd almost prefer it if he just got it over with."

"What do we even plan to do if he _does_ show up?" Lily asked, kneeling to take her work shoes off. Brockmon opened his mouth, but as soon as he did he realized he didn't actually have a good answer to that, and he closed it again. "My point exactly."

"It just worries me," Brockmon said, shaking his head. "Not knowing what he's doing doesn't exactly put my mind at ease."

"Forgive me for asking," Lily said, "but why exactly was he so preoccupied with keeping you back in the first place? I mean, the catalyst reaction's kind of a one-and-done deal as far as you know, right?"

"Right," Brockmon said with a nod, crossing over to and crawling up onto the couch, "but Ratamon must have been concerned about something else if he didn't want me to get back. My best guess is that he doesn't want anyone who knows as much as I do roaming free."

The obvious question -- _if that's the case, why don't you just tell anyone who will listen everything you know?_ \-- was one Lily already knew the answer to. She and Brockmon alike had no idea how to even broach the subject with anyone who it would be useful to tell. It sounded dumb, but, hey, you try inserting yourself an established group of people, especially taking into account how much of what had happened over the past month was on your shoulders.

Lily had never been a spill-her-guts type in the first place, last weekend notwithstanding, and Brockmon had historically played his cards close to his chest.   
One supposes that this was part of what got them into this mess in the first place, but old habits tend to die hard.

But digimon emergences were definitely getting more frequent, so even if Ratamon wasn't doing anything directly... something was definitely happening, even if they didn't know what.

Brockmon sighed and glanced at Lily's D-Rive where she had set it on the table, then over at her. "You think we should go?" he asked, and it was as much a suggestion as it was a genuine question, him asking for her input.

Lily sighed, running a hand backwards through her hair. "And here I was, with all my busy Saturday night plans." Any other time, that might have been an actual complaint she had, but this week... no, this month had really taken a toll on her. "Give me two seconds to change out of my work clothes, I smell like potpourri."

 

***

Lily wasn't surprised by the fact that by the time she got down to where her radar was leading her -- which was down on the south side of town, she was late to the party. It was underneath an freeway overpass, a forest of grafitti-ed concrete pillars and scrubby grass poking up from under dust and gravel, with the rumbling roar of cars for soundtrack.   
She hung back, standing half-behind one of those concrete pillars to watch the in-progress fight she had stumbled upon from a safe distance.

"Southern Cross!" Malakhimon cried, the white beams of light smashing into the hide of the giant triceratops that was currently threatening to take out a concrete pillar with the wild swinging of its head. The dinosaur roared as it turned its attention to Malakhimon and began to charge.   
The angel-dragon grabbed a hold of Triceramon's horns to grapple with it. She gritted her teeth, glancing to the side to see if she could spot where her ally in this fight had gone.

"Spirit Ripper!" Banshemon cried. Where she actually _was_ was unclear until her claws appeared in mid-air -- or rather, the glowing light around them appeared. The rest of her flickered into visibility only a moment before she dragged her claws through Triceramon, catching the dinosaur wholly off-guard. As she passed, Triceramon roared and began to pixellate.

A burst of data later and two twin beams of light shot into Peter and Ryan's D-Rives, and the kerfluffle of battle was replaced with the sound of cars on the overpass above them.

"I forgot," Malakhimon said primly, her face even, "that you can turn invisible."

"I'm..." Banshemon said, a bit flustered, "I'm trying to get better about using it--"

Malakhimon, though, couldn't maintain her stern expression, and she smiled a small smile. "I wasn't complaining. It was clever," she said, and Banshemon looked even more flustered.

"Is that all they've got?" Ryan said, stretching his hands over his head. It was hard to be heard over the roar of cars going by overhead. Flashes of red and white brought Malakhimon and Banshemon back downto their normal sizes.

"Hopefully," Peter said with a nod, looking around. He _though_ he saw something move, and he paused and furrowed his brow, but... "Thanks for your help," he said after a moment, nodding an acknowledgement to Ryan.

Ryan paused, then nodded right back. "Same to you," he said. "Shitomon, let's split before anyone starts getting nosy."

"That works for me," Shitomon said. She nodded her thanks to Banmon, and in a burst of red, she was gone from sight.

They parted ways soon after, and Banmon floated after Peter as they walked towards where he had left his car. It was a short enough walk, in an area with little enough foot traffic, that he didn't bother minimizing her. She could hide if she had to-- there would be ample places for her to do so.

"You've been doing better in combat, I think," Peter said over his shoulder.

"Huh?"

"I just mean you're getting a lot more confident when you fight lately."

Banmon paused. She hadn't been feeling her best lately. "I have to admit I don't really feel the part..." she said.   
Peter hummed and nodded slowly. He didn't say much else, his eyes focused on where he thought he had seen movement a moment ago, and he trudged on with Banmon sticking close to him.

Lily seemed to realize that she couldn't stay hidden without making things more awkward, so she kind of half-stepped out as Peter and Banmon drew close. Banmon squeaked and dove behind her partner before she realized that she didn't strictly need to hide.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, and, boy, wasn't _that_ just about the story of her life? It felt appropriate that this was the first thing she'd said to them -- any of them -- since last weekend.

Peter shook his head, an unspoken _it's fine_ , as Banmon peeked her head over his shoulder. "It's good to see you're still alive," he said, and Lily couldn't quite get a read on how sincere or sarcastic he was being. "Are you busy? I was about to meet up with Sam for something and I think he's been wanting a chance to talk to you. More specifically, your partner."

Lily raised her eyebrows, and wondered--   
_Was it really that easy?_

"I'm not busy, no."

 

***

"Cool," Lily said, peering at the bones and dead animals in jars that littered the shelves of Peter's flat. Peter's roommate was at work, Sam hadn't yet come around, and Brockmon was being reserved (read: didn't want to come out of his D-Rive, because he was being a big baby), so Lily was filling the space by investigating the slightly odd decor choices. "What's this one?" she asked, pointing at one in particular.

Peter glanced over from the couch to see which one she was looking at. "Fetal kitten."

" _Creepy,_ " Lily said, grinning.

 

"People generally don't say that with that much excitement in their voices," Peter said, eyebrow raised.

"Well, I recognized that one, so I was just curious," she said, gesturing at the badger skull next to the jar.   
Of note was the fact that she was gesturing with the arm that was almost fully sleeved in tattoos. Now that they weren't standing on a half-dark street or shoved into a too-small apartment, it was much easier to see that one of the centerpieces of the entire sleeve was an intricate badger skull, enwreathed in roses and -- appropriately -- lilies, emblazoned on her upper arm.   
Well, that explained why she was able to identify the skull on first glance, at least.

"I guess the ghost digimon kind of fits you, then?" Lily mused out loud, and Peter hummed.

"Everyone," by which he meant _everyone who knows about Banmon_ , "says that. I've noticed that the digimon we're partnered to tend to be appropriate."

"Oh?" Lily said, glancing over at him. Banmon was sticking close to him, watching her carefully, and Lily shifted a bit uncomfortably, self-conscious.

"Banmon suits me, as everyone says she does," Peter said, tilting his head at Banmon, "a loudmouthed bat suits Xander, a raven suits Natalie-- you get my point. A badger--- bear? -- seems to suit you."

"What exactly is your logic on that one?" Lily said, somewhere between amused and bemused. "Since, no offense, you barely know me."

Peter was undeterred. "Something, I think, about hunkering down and minding your own business until that's not an option. I hope I'm not offending or being presumptuous."

Lily paused, and she shrugged pointedly. "Nah, you're pretty much on the money," she said. "Honestly, I figure that's probably because if you spend fifteen years around someone, you're going to start resembling them, yeah?"

Banmon nodded slowly, but any further discussion was stimeyed by the tap-tap of rapping knuckles on wood. "Door's open," Peter said, and the door swung open. Sam was shouldering the door, maneuvering around the two laptop bags he had criss-crossing his body. Gelermon, on all fours like a proper dog, slid in as soon as the door was open far enough for her to fit.

"Hi," Sam said, kicking the door shut behind him as he entered. He glanced at Lily-- Peter had told him she was going to be here, and for a moment it looked like he was going to go tight-lipped as he tended to go around people he wasn't familiar with.   
"Glad to see you haven't died between last week and now," he said instead. "Was starting to wonder about that."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Lily said.

Peter shook his head, deciding not to comment that Sam only barely had room to talk, given his own propensity for radio silence outside of digimon fights, if only because he knew Gelermon would take it as an affront.

"Where's badgerboy?" Gelermon said, looking around and sniffing at the air. "All I smell is the usual smell of death and misery and hipster trash this place has, no new digimon at all."

Lily huffed a laugh, and apparently drawn forth by the mocking, a paradoxical flash of blackness darkened the room for a split second. A black shape quickly formed and as the dark energy faded, Brockmon -- conscious and not half-frozen this time -- stood at his partner's side.

If not for the fact that both Sam and Peter had seen their own partners go berserker in turn, it might have been jarring to see the monster that had given them so much trouble in a small and fluffy form. Still, though, they could see the resemblance if they squinted-- the same indigo shade of fur, similar big blunt claws. Even the belts wrapped around his limbs, they realized, had been mirrored in Draugmon.

... okay, it was still kind of surreal.

Brockmon paused, shifted his weight, and glanced to Lily for instruction. For all he was trying to put on an air of seeming confident, aloof, composed, he was actually fairly nervous. He wasn't entirely sure how they would respond--

"Hi," Banmon said, raising a hand in greeting. Gelermon nodded by way of greeting.

"Hello," Brockmon said slowly, cautiously.

"Glad to have you here, in particular," Sam said, looking over at the badger, "seeing as you're just about the only person we know who can help me out with a question I've got."

"Glad to be of service," Brockmon said with a clipped nod.

"I would've asked you," Sam continued, looking over at Lily, "but, uh." He faltered slightly. "Frankly the idea of contacting you out of the blue makes me crave the void, so, you know."

"I can relate," Lily said, smiling faintly. She couldn't help but feel a kind of sense of... not quite relief, but something akin.

"Clearly," Peter said, his voice flat, "it's a good thing I'm just so damned outgoing." He paused for a moment, allowing his sarcasm to really sink in. "God, it's a mystery we get anything done without Natalie shepherding us."

Lily took a seat on the far end of the couch, opposite from where Peter was, while Sam situated himself on the floor.

"A while back," Sam said, for Lily's benefit, "Natalie had a chat with-- Ryan. You know, mister sunglasses, dude whose apartment we bogarted?"

"Right."

"I tagged along so I wouldn't have to hear about it in post. Shitomon mentioned something about a time dilation between their world and ours-- something about how when their big head honcho dude separated the worlds, their flow of time more or less synched up with ours."

"Right," Brockmon said, nodding. "The digital world has, as I understand it, been pretty much in a state of stasis since the quarantine."

"That's just it, though," Sam said, turning his palms upwards. "The digital world _isn't_ quarantined anymore. Or if it is, it's a shitty quarantine that's not working. That's kind of the point, right? To get the time flow to speed back up so whatever-the-fuck-it-is can start growing back?"

Brockmon nodded slowly, furrowing his brow.

Lily caught on immediately. "So you think that their timeflow is starting to speed back up or something?"

"Got it in one," Sam said, tapping his nose. "It's just a theory, of course, but _if_ it's starting to accelerate again..."

"Then it follows that even if the rate and number of digimon making it through is the same from the other end," Peter said, "it would appear to be happening quicker from our side."

" _I love explaining things to people who actually understand,_ " Sam muttered to nobody in particular, turning his eyes upwards as though at some imagined deity. (Really, the entire group -- not just those present -- was relatively quick to pick up anything he put down, so to speak, and _god that was nice_.)   
Try not to be too condescending there, buddy.   
He coughed, coming back down to reality.   
"So what I needed to do was ask you, badgerboy," Sam said, looking to Brockmon, "if you've noticed any time dilation in the times you've been dragged back to funtown by Ratamon, in between his visits to wrecks-shit-ville."

"I hate to disappoint, but I can't really say for sure," Brockmon said, scratching at his nose. "Maybe a little bit. I admit I didn't exactly keep track of calendar days, but--" he paused, and furrowed his brow even further.

"If it had been just a couple extra days," Banmon said, tilting her head, "you might not have noticed it."

Brockmon considered this. "It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. I assume it might only start to pick up over time, as the connection grows stronger." He frowned and looked at the floor. "Maybe _that's_ what Ratamon's been doing..." he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

"Pardon?" Peter said, raising an eyebrow.

"He's been practically driving himself crazy the past week over the last week wondering why Ratamon hasn't shown back up," Lily said, placing a hand on the badger digimon's head.

"No I haven't," Brockmon said in an unconvincing way, and he shook his head to dislodge Lily's hand. "It's just that if Ratamon is feeling threatened by the loss of some element of his plan," meaning: Brockmon himself, "he might be... how to put this..."

Sam provided. "Putting the pedal to the metal on making the time go all pear-shaped?"

"Something to that effect-- or going all-in on a backup plan, at least," Brockmon said. "Giving an inch now in order to blow everyone back a mile later."

"That's comforting," Lily said dryly, frowning.

"Isn't it just?" Sam said, scratching the back of his neck. "Man, it sucks being right all the time."   
Stay humble.

"Wasn't there something," Peter said, "you wanted to talk even if I hadn't run into Lily?"

"Right, yeah," Sam said after a moment to remember what, exactly, it was he _had_ been intending to talk about before Lily and Brockmon had thoroughly derailed his train of thought.

"Hey, before you get into that," Gelermon said, catching the attention of everyone. "Since you've asked him what you need to, can I borrow Brockmon for a sec? I've got something I've been meaning to ask him."

"By 'ask'," Peter said, "do you mean 'beat up'?"

"Have some faith in me, scarfy," Gelermon said, though she smirked.

"That's really up to Brockmon, isn't it?" Banmon said, tilting her head.

Brockmon indeed looked around a bit and considered before nodding. "That's alright," he said after a moment, and a little bit of logistics later, they -- that is to say, Brockmon, Gelermon, and Banmon to mediate just in case -- slipped off to Peter's room.

 

***

Peter's room was dark, which suited Brockmon fine. He looked around; there were more bones and wet-preserved animals on the walls, above milk crates full of vinyl records sequestered in the corner.   
All of them seemed fairly accustomed to dark conditions, though it was slighty disconcerting that Brockmon's eyes practically seemed to glow in the dark.

"If you're going to ask me to tell you about your pasts," Brockmon said, acting pre-emptively, "I have to admit I don't know very much, so I'm not going to be much help. I was in large part in isolation for much of the time leading up to the severance of the worlds." When both dog and ghost looked slightly bewildered that he seemed to know about their spotty memories, he added, "Lily told me that your humans told her that your memories are shot."

"Well, that's not what I was going to ask about," Gelermon said. Actually, the issue of their pasts _was_ a question Gelermon had wanted to ask, but she was okay to move rapidly along without letting on about that, because she had another question.

"Go on, then," Brockmon said, gesturing with one blunt-clawed paw.

"Why did you make friends with your human?"

He blinked. "For the same reason the both of you did, I imagine," he said. "When I arrived here, Lily was the first one who found me, and she quite quickly decided I was her new best friend."

"I think what she means," Banmon said, piping up, "is more like..." She paused and thought of how to put it. "When we arrived, we didn't know where we had come from. We still don't, really. But you did. You do."

"Right," Gelermon said with a nod. "Shitomon, Hulimon, and Lurumon-- they remembered too, but they believed they were part of some big righteous crusade. You, though, from what I can tell, have a perfectly intact memory. You came here with a mission to help re-ignite that corruption _thing_ , but you still made friends with a human. You had to know that it would cause problems for her when the time came to follow through."

Brockmon frowned. He was on the spot, and he didn't see a purpose in trying to weasel his way out of it. "The effects my presence would have on her in the future were not my primary concern at the time, no," he said. "My priorities have changed over time; by the time I was concerned about getting her involved, she wasn't interested in parting ways with me. She's made her choice. I made mine." He paused, and tilted his head. "Why do you ask?"

Gelermon frowned, folding her arms and drumming her claws on her upper arms. "It's just that if I had known," she said, "the kind of garbage shitshow we were going to get involved with, I don't know if I'd have wanted to drag Sam into it."

"Supposing you _had_ known what your future held," Brockmon said, "would you have cared enough about a stranger's wellbeing to not want to involve him?"

"He's not--" Gelermon began, defensive, but she knew what Brockmon was going to say before she even said it.

"He was a stranger then," the badger said firmly. "There's no version of events where you both care enough about him to not want to get him involved where he isn't already involved. You've made your choices, and he's made his, the same as me and Lily."

"It doesn't feel like our partners really have a choice, though," Banmon said, looking at her scarf-end hands. "We... we kind of dragged them into this without full disclosure..."

"You realize that they could part ways with you at any time if they so chose," Brockmon said. He spoke with the consideration of someone who'd had a _lot_ of time to consider these things, instead of the mere weeks that the others had.

Gelermon curled her lip to bare her teeth. "Is this supposed to make me feel better?"

Banmon, though, seemed to catch Brockmon's point a bit better. "They haven't. But-- but that's because they wouldn't want to abandon us to deal with emergents alone."

"Of course they don't," Brockmon said, tilting his head, "but do you think they haven't made that choice of their own volition? If they didn't want to be involved, then nothing would be strictly-speaking stopping them."

"Except for all the giant monsters," Gelermon said flatly. "But, you know, I suppose that's overlookable."

"The digimon are concerned with us," Brockmon pointed out, "not the humans. There would be consequences if they decided to part ways with any of us, but consequences are part of any decision."

Banmon sighed, her shoulders -- 'shoulders' -- slumping. "That's actually kind of been bothering me," she said, shaking her head.

"What has?" Brockmon and Gelermon both said at the same time, and they glanced at each other but chose not to comment on this.

"I-- the emergent digimon who came about in the first place were only concerned with us, right?" she said. "I know that the humans have the D-Rives, and that means something, but... I don't know. I can't help but feel like they wouldn't need them in the first place-- like this would all have been a lot easier if Ratamon hadn't... had the chance to activate the catalyst... thing." She trailed off inarticulately, but her point was made.

"Honesty, I think that might have been true," Brockmon said after a moment of heavy silence, shaking his head. "If we -- all of you carriers and I -- had just surrendered, I don't know if we would have this much of a problem."

"So are you just saying we should roll over and surrender?" Gelermon growled, and Banmon shrunk back, even though Gelermon wasn't snapping at her.

"No," Brockmon said evenly, unperturbed by Gelermon's temper, "I'm saying that it might have been better if we all _had_ , back when all of this begun, but we didn't."

Gelermon raised an eyebrow incredulously. "Yeah, okay, pardon me, but _what's the fuckin' difference_?"

"Just the fact that we didn't?" Banmon said, uncertain, but Brockmon nodded at her.

"The fact that we didn't is the difference, yes," he said, splaying his hands out palms-upwards. He sounded like he'd thought about this _a lot_ ; he sounded almost like he had practiced this in his head (spoiler alert: he had). "Originally, when it was just digimon who had a problem with you and a few feral digimon, if we had all just laid down, then maybe the corruption wouldn't have had a chance to reactivate, and the incidents would have ended as a fluke. Maybe the D-Rives were just a backup plan from whatever sent them and not meant to be the first line of defense." He paused.   
"Or, alternatively, maybe it would have gone exponentially worse; maybe everything would have gotten worse and the partnerships of us and our humans are the only thing standing between total anarchy and--" he paused, losing a bit of steam, and his slightly haughty tone faltered, "... not that. The point is that either way, neither of those outcomes is what _did_ happen."

"Nice monologue," Gelermon said, rolling her eyes. "You've had a lot of time to think about this, haven't you?"

Brockmon shrugged. "I've had fifteen years to consider and reconsider my position, my choices, and my actions," he said, his voice wry, "and the past three weeks with nothing but that and the desire to freeze Ratamon in an icecube to keep me entertained. I have to get my fun from somewhere."

"The events we are considering now wouldn't be something we are considering if not for the fact that the five of you chose to fight back, that I chose to lie low, and Dinmon's little task force decided to try to take you down. None of those would have been options on the table if not for the fact that all of us chose to make friends with our human partners and gotten them involved. Regardless of how good an idea those were in retrospect... what is it that humans say? Hindsight is 20/20?"

Gelermon opened her mouth, and then closed it without saying anything. She snorted through her nose and folded her arms.

"Is something wrong?" Banmon said, glancing over at Gelermon.

"He's more or less right, and I hate it."

Brockmon huffed a laugh -- the first time he had done so -- and he fell forward onto all-fours. "I have a question for the two of you, now, if you're satisfied with my answer to yours."

"As satisfied as I think she's going to be..." Banmon said, tilting her head at Gelermon and then nodding at Brockmon. "What is it?"

Brockmon paused and pawed at the carpeting for a moment. Mere moments ago he had been giving them what sounded like a rehearsed speech, something he had had time to think about and practice, and now he sounded quite a bit less so.   
"When you digivolve, what does that feel like?"

Banmon blinked. "It's..." she said, and then considered her words. "I don't like to do it. I don't like fighting very much," she said, shaking her head, "but when I do it, it's when I feel like there's something I need to do that's more important... like I need to protect someone, or stop something bad from happening."

"And that feeling turns into like a rock dropped into your stomach," Gelermon said, pointing at her own chest, "except it gets kind of stuck right about here, and starts getting bigger until it feels like it's going to blast your arms and legs off." She paused, and looked at Banmon, who had no proper arms and no legs to speak of. "Or, you know, whatever."

Banmon nodded. "It gets... bigger, and when it can't get any bigger, that's when I evolve into Banshemon," she said.

"Or Frekimon," Gelermon said, pounding her fist into her opposite palm, and then she paused to gesture. "Or whatever, I assume it's the same for the others."

Brockmon nodded slowly, and he considered before he answered his next question. "And when you digivolve to ultimate?" he said, trying to stay diplomatic, but he could tell there was a slight awkwardness to the question.

"... basically the same, I guess," Banmon said, her voice wavering a little bit. "But worse."

"It's like instead of growing," Gelermon provided, "that feeling's being dragged out by force. Like it's not supposed to come out but fuck you, something wants it out anyway and it comes out kicking and screaming."

Brockmon nodded slowly, his face solemn and his eyes on the floor.

"Was it something like that?" Banmon said quietly, leaving _when you turned into Draugmon_ unsaid, but it was understood.

"Something like that," Brockmon echoed with a slow nod.

 

***

Ratamon dropped down into the ruins. He was light enough, after all, and between his small size and his wings flapping to slow his fall, he barely even disturbed the dust when he landed.

He had to admit he hadn't bothered to come here often; the cracks that had been turning up elsewhere in the wastes had been much easier to reach, seeing as this place had practically caved in in the intervening years-- or rather, it had almost entirely caved in back when the refugees and their pursuers had crossed over.   
It had already been in an impressive state of disrepair, but the past fifteen years had done as much of a number on it as the thousands prior had.

It was really sort of vindicating to see it like this, but even so, didn't particularly care to come poking around here unless he had to. It wasn't exactly full of happy memories.

But still-- now that things were starting to pick up... well, it would be good to keep an eye on it.

Somewhere far away, footsteps echoed. Ratamon flicked his feathery ears.

Some digimon must be wandering these ruins, he supposed-- blind, almost definitely, either by madness or by the darkness. By this point, it was likely both. Needless to say, Ratamon wasn't particularly worried about it; anything big enough to make such a noise would almost definitely be too big to follow Ratamon too far.

It was, after all, a long way down yet.

 

***

"Right, but that still doesn't explain why they've all been feral," Peter pointed out, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked at Sam's laptop screens. Sam had brought two, and both were open so he could show multiple things at once. One had his current attempt at decrypting the dumped file from his D-Rive (the one _without_ a minimized Gelermon, he didn't want to brick two computers), and the other was an honest-to-god spreadsheet he had made for tracking digimon emergences.

What a fucking nerd.

"Right, see, that's what I'm saying," Sam said, nodding. "Whether there's more feral ones or whether there are fewer ones who have aspirations of glory or whatever the fuck, I think it's evidence of _something_ changing on the other end. Aside, I mean, from the possible time dilation thing."

"That's vague. You got anything else?"

"I was getting there."

Lily sat listening to all of this with rapt attention, but she wasn't contributing much. More than anything, she was fascinated by the way the two rapidly bounced their ideas off of each other, and she was content to simply listen and absorb the information as she tried to get herself up to speed.   
The creak of the bedroom door drew the humans' attention. Gelermon came out first, followed by Brockmon in short order, while Banmon simply phased through the solid wood.

"It go well?" she said, and Brockmon snorted as he padded over to her, hunched over on all fours.

"As much as could be expected," Brockmon said; he felt that the conversation he'd had had been productive. "You?"

"I'm just absorbing like a sponge," Lily said, inclining her head over at Sam and Peter.

"You can feel free to add, of course, if you'd like," Peter said, clearly hastily trying to make up for accidentally locking Lily out of the conversation.

"Oh, hell, no," Lily said, putting her hands up, palms facing out. "I don't want to barge in and make an idiot of myself talking about things I've got no place talking about."

"Can't be worse than _we_ sound half the time," Sam said, closing the computer that had the spreadsheet open so he could focus on the D-Rive file.

Lily laughed through her nose. "Okay, fair enough. My point stands, though. It's not really my business."

"Pretty sure it _is_ your business to some degree, on account of you making buddies with a badger," Gelermon said, pointing at Brockmon.

"She _is_ right," Sam said, "you're kind of implicated." Beat. "I'm making it sound like a worse thing than-- no, wait, it involves giant death monsters, it's allowed to sound a little bad."

"... in nicer terms," Peter said, picking up on Sam's point, "the point is that you're a part of this as much as we are."

"I'm not exactly the _get involved help the community_ type," Lily said, rubbing the back of her head a bit nervously.

"You're in good company," Peter said for the second time this evening.

"That's kind of the kicker of it, isn't it?" Sam said, glancing up from his computer. "Fuck if _I_ thought I'd start spending a bunch of time around you people, but you kind of get drawn into it."

"You sound like you're complaining about it," Lily said, raising an eyebrow.

"That's just how he sounds all the time," Gelermon said. Sam rolled his eyes and nudged Gelermon with the side of his foot.

(After all, it wasn't like Sam _had_ to come over here to talk about anything he had planned to talk about. Lily and Brockmon being available was a bonus. If he had really _wanted_ to just share his thoughts with Peter, or, hell, any of the group, he could well have done that over text, right?)

(Lily was starting to consider that maybe she hadn't had anything to be afraid of.)

 

***

By the time they had gotten to clearing out of Peter's apartment, the sky would already have been dark even without the clouds blocking what moonlight there may have been.   
It was possible that they had spent a bit more time than they had intended to talking. What had started as an on-topic discussion of digimon emergences had derailed into Sam and Lily both flipping through and snidely commentating on Peter's collection of vinyl records while the digimon contemplated amongst themselves why on earth _being a hipster_ was such a big deal.

The fact that things were going well should, by now, be a red flag in and of itself, but even so-- it hadn't even been twelve hours.

Sam, Lily, and their respective digimon were just preapring to clear out when the power browned out with the buzz of old electronics. Even as the lights came back to full brightness, they all felt that sinking feeling somewhere in the pits of their stomachs.

"Shit," Brockmon said flatly, expressing the mood of the room as he turned his eyes up at the flickering lights.

"Of course," Peter said, glancing at his D-Rive, and sure enough, it had lit up.

"We're now averaging _one a day_!" Sam said, voice acidic as he pulled his own D-Rive out. Sure, it wasn't _literally_ one for a day, but now it was averaging out. "Thanks for making up the deficit--" he said, and swiped over the dot on the screen to read its name, "Deltamon. Champion."

"Could be worse," Peter said. Even though he said this, he was clearly not thrilled.   
It could have been an ultimate level, for instance-- the fact that no more of them had shown up was only a partial comfort. It could have been more than one digimon. It could have been a lot of things.

"Could be a lot better," Lily said.

It could have been, indeed, a lot better.

 

 

***

The good news: Deltamon had emerged quite close to them, meaning that they could make it on foot.

The bad news: Deltamon had emerged quite close, meaning it was in the university district, meaning it was near quite a lot of people.

Frekimon and Banshemon led the charge, having evolved just about as soon as they had had the room to do so. Lily minimized Brockmon, as he wasn't a particularly fast runner, and so minimizing him would make it easier to keep up.   
(And moreover, neither she nor him wanted him to be a potential liability in a fight.   
Three on one would just be overkill, right? Right.)

The street lights were flickering eratically-- even the traffic lights were affected, and traffic had understandably ground to a halt for blocks around, which at least made it easier for the little ragtag group to cut across streets and duck through side-paths to take the most direct route to Deltamon.

Deltamon -- a tremendous blue dinosaur-like beast with extra heads in place of hands (one skeletal and the other more metallic, both saurian, both monstrous) -- practically filled the narrow street, and didn't seem to care overmuch about what was in its way, taking out trees, power lines, and the windows of buildings with the swing of its twin tails and the thrashing of its hand-heads.

The group of humans, led by their digimon, only barely skidded to a stop in time to avoid bursting out of an alleyway and into the path of a twisted half of a car that had been sent skidding down the road like a pebble across the surface of a pond.   
Hope whoever's car that was had good insurance, because the other half of it was currently being twisted like a bread-tie between the jaws of Deltamon's skeletal hand-head.

"Ravenous Hunter!" Frekimon roared, the flames around her wrists flaring to life as she lunged forward, running on all fours to close the distance between herself and Deltamon quickly.

"Serpent Bite!"

Deltamon reacted in remarkable time for its size, dropping the mangled car remains from its skeletal hand and striking out with it at the wolf. Frekimon leapt, deftly avoiding the attack, and she slashed out at Deltamon. She grazed it with her claws, only to be knocked away by a quick retaliatory strike knocking her astray.

""Banshee's Call!"

"Triple Forces!"

Deltamon focused its two hand-heads straight ahead and opened its normal mouth, and from its mouth and each of its hands, it fired a beam. The three beams converged on point-- in this case, Banshemon. The beams shot forward lightning-quick, tearing through her ghostly attack and catching her unawares, knocking Banshemon herself backwards onto the sidewalk.

" _You're_ a real pain in the ass, aren't you," Frekimon muttered, rearing back. "New Moon Fire!" She fired a green fireball, which at least got Deltamon's _attention_ , but as soon as it turned--

"Triple Forces!"

This time the beam was focused on Frekimon, and she took the brunt of it; if she tried to dodge, it would probably hit something else, so she may as well just grit her teeth, and Deltamon was quick to strike out again with its head-hands.

In a burst of black, Brockmon appeared next to Lily, his fur bristling. "Something's wrong," he said.

"Gee, you think?" Sam couldn't stop himself from saying as Frekimon attempted to sink her teeth into Deltamon's arm, only to be shaken off with a ground-shaking roar.

"What do you mean?" Peter said, flinching as he watched Banshemon take the brunt of a beam attack.

"It's--" Brockmon said, but he cut himself off and looked to Lily. She looked back at him, not entirely sure what he was getting at; he shook his head and turned his head back to the fight between the three digimon.

Even if its eyes were on Frekimon, it seemed to know exactly where Banshemon was, and visa-versa. They exchanged blows, but neither Frekimon nor Banshemon could find an opening to get a proper hit in. Even though Deltamon was only a champion level, its awareness and its vicioussness, both paired with the narrow space they were trying to maneuver in... it was proving to be a little bit frustrating.   
Not _worrying_ , not yet, but-- but people were gawking, and screaming, and filming, and there was only so much time before people they really didn't want getting involved (read: police) would try to get involved...

And though they hadn't noticed it, he had.

Sometimes, when they hit Deltamon... it shifted slightly. Glitched. Distorted. It only took the blink of an eye, and it would have been easy to miss in the chaos of battle, with attacks flying, but Brockmon was nothing if not perceptive.   
(Had any of the other digimon this past week done that, he wondered?)

"Brockmon," Lily said, kneeling down. She didn't speak further, but her question was clear to him: _do you want to get involved?_

He wasn't sure if she had seen it, but he knew that it was more than that. He could see what looked almost like guilt on her face as she watched Banshemon and Frekimon take blows as they desperately tried to avoid wrecking things while trying to find an opening.

Even if he had no idea how _well_ it was going to work if he tried to get involved, that expression on his partner's face was enough to convince him to try.

Brockmon nodded slowly, and then:   
"Occupy its hands!" he barked out, suddenly lumbering forward. Frekimon and Banshemon both gave a little bit of a start, not expecting to hear Brockmon yell a command, but they both quickly surmised that the badger, apparently, had an idea.

Not _much_ of an idea, but an idea nonetheless.

Banshemon grabbed a hold of Deltamon's more robotic arm, while with a mighty effort, Frekimon wrestled with its skeletal arm. Deltamon roared, trying to snap out with either hand. Frekimon and Banshemon couldn't do much else, focusing as they were on subduing Deltamon's arms, but it left the saurian digimon open.

"Icicle Arrows!" Brockmon yelled, coming to a stop and getting onto his hind legs once he as a bit closer to Deltamon. His claws froze over in an instant, and he slashed them through the air, releasing a trio of razor-sharp icicles that flew at Deltamon's exposed abdomen.

They had almost no effect-- but for the effect that Brockmon was going for, as Deltamon snapped its attention to the badger, and yellow eyes met yellow eyes.

Brockmon growled and stood his ground, his pupils restricted and his teeth bared. His eyes practically glowed in the dark as he met Deltamon's. There was no awareness in Deltamon's gaze-- only a wild and feral madness.

A very familiar kind of madness indeed.

Brockmon and Lily's D-Rive both began to swirl with a pitch-black energy, almost getting lost in the dark of the night and the flickering lights.

There was no high-pitched glitchy squeal like there had been the first times the refugee digimon had digivolved. Whether this was because Brockmon didn't react with the D-Rive the same way, or because _that_ fuse had already been blown out when he digivolved into Draugmon... it was hard to tell, and it wasn't really the point. The point was that Brockmon's voice was clear and bold as he said:

 

"Brockmon, drive evolve to..."

Brockmon hunched over, no longer able to stay on two feet as his body began to grow in size, his arms growing thick as tree-trunks and the claws on his hind legs growing long and metallic. Meanwhile, the claws on his front paws vanished as the red bands grew into gloves that engulfed his hands entirely. Before this could be lamented, massive frozen claws broke through in his old claws' place with a loud cracking noise. A thick mane grew, and grew, until his front half was almost entirely covered in extra-thick pale fur, and from underneath this mane, long thin icicles sprouted.

As he stopped growing, he seemed to have split the difference between badger and bear-- the dark markings of a badger on the face of a bear, a stout and sturdy hunch-backed build and massive digger-claws. As he moved, a fine powder snow flew into the air around him, only to melt almost immediately on contact with the warm air.

"Melemon!" he roared, his breath visible for a split second as he tossed his head back to bare rows of vicious teeth.

 

He didn't waste a moment; the moment he had re-formed in champion form, he rushed forward, his movements heavy and powerful as he ran, full-tackle, at Deltamon.   
"Arctic Impact!" he roared; as he drew in close, he raised one paw, and his icy claws visibly grew in size with a cracking sound. The moment before he impacted his opponent, he smashed them into Deltamon's abdomen, leveraging his weight against the mutated dinosaur. Banshemon and Frekimon disengaged with their respective arms immediately to avoid being dragged along as it stumbled backwards.

"It's coming," Deltamon growled, the first words it had said that weren't an attack name, its eyes wild and its lips curling up over its sharp teeth. Even though it was a dinosaur, it almost gave off the impression of a mad dog. It seemed that the impact of a direct hit seemed to have awoken something in it. "It's coming and you can't stop it it's coming it's coming--"

"Yeah, okay, great, it's coming, what the _fuck_ are you talking about?" Frekimon growled, flexing her claws.

Instead of providing any insight into what that cryptic phrase meant, Deltamon attacked. "Serpent Bite!" it roared, lashing out with its skeletal hand. Melemon, Frekimon, and Banshemon all stumbled backwards, not wanting to be caught by the jaws. It didn't even take time to breathe; it launched another attack. This time it was aimed at Melemon, directly in front of him. "Triple Forces!"

Melemon growled, bearing -- no pun intended -- his weight down and gritting his teeth as he took the brunt of the attack, even as Deltamon showed no intent of letting up. Frekimon was prepared to hurl an attack of her own, and Banshemon's claws began to glow in case she had to rush in, but both of them held off, because--

"Icicle Shroud!" Melemon growled through grit teeth.   
Spikes of ice began to sprout out of Melemon's body-- his arms, his head, and his back all began to sprout razor-sharp ice until it almost completely covered him. As the force of the beam broke the icicles, two more grew back in their place. They continued to grow, veiling Melemon in a protective layer of wickedly-sharp ice, right until he slammed into Deltamon's abdomen, having straight-up plowed through the beam attack.

When Melemon crashed into Deltamon, its beam attack ceased. It roared, lashing its tails and flailing its arms wildly. "It's coming! Serpent Bite!"

Deltamon was not the only digimon that called an attack just then, however.

"Banshee's Call!"

"New Moon Fire!"

"Arctic Impact!"

Frekimon's fireball, Banshemon's ghosts, and Melemon's icy claws all collided on Deltamon at the same time, and that was enough to push it over the edge. In a burst of light, Deltamon dissolved into pixelated bits of light that shot with laser precision into the D-Rives being held by Peter, Sam, and Lily.

Melemon stood where Deltamon had been a moment earlier, and the layers of icicles that had covered his body began to sublimate into a hypercold mist. He breathed heavily, and his breath cooled in the air around him, adding to the fog that swirled around him.   
As the fog began to dissipate in the gentle wind, Melemon was engulfed in a black glow. In mere moments, he was replaced by Brockmon, who maintained his hunched-over, bear-walking stance. The civilian onlookers who hadn't run away (luckily, most people had at least the sense to clear the immediate vicinity) didn't want to be the ones to approach the badger.

Frekimon and Banshemon exchanged glances, first with each other and then with their respective partners, before they followed suit in flashes of green and white.

In moments -- before the light even had the chance to fade from Gelermon and Banmon -- all three rookie digimon vanished in bursts of their respective shades as they were minimized, leaving their human partners to try and look casual.

Peter sighed, rubbing the back of his head and glancing around. Most of the people who had been rubbernecking were already clearing off, and he wondered if this was becoming as routine to the populace as it was to their group.

Sam, meanwhile, shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced to Lily; Lily, for her part, pocketed her D-Rive and kept her lips pressed tightly together.

"... well, it's a good thing we had a third on hand," Sam said without prompting, turning around and making towards the alley from whence they had come. "Would've been an even bigger pain in the dick without it, you know?"

Lily raised an eyebrow as she made to follow, but she couldn't say she didn't appreciate the effort to make her (and Brockmon) feel included.

They didn't talk much more as they began the trek back to Peter's, much slower than they had come to the site of the incident-- at least, not until they were a goodly ways away.

"What was all that 'coming' stuff was about?" Peter muttered, more to himself than anything.

"Insert inappropriate joke here," Sam muttered, and neither Peter nor Lily could stop themselves from snorting despite themselves. "My best guess is something bad."

"Thanks," Lily said, smiling a little, "couldn't have figured that out myself."

Sam rolled his eyes.

Really, though; it was hard to feel too good about anything. Any hint they got at what was going on only set in a greater and greater sense of dread, of confusion and unease and apprehension and all other kinds of synonyms for 'bad feelings'.   
So if all they were going to make progress on today was a few knew pieces of information and a chance to finally see Brockmon help in battle... they'd take that for now. They'd each have a lot to talk about once they had the time to talk one-on-one with their partners, and in the days to come, with the group as a whole.

Not least of all because they had all -- not just Brockmon -- seen the way Deltamon had distorted.


	24. Episode 24: The Conductor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3c

Meghan could think of numerous things she'd rather be doing at two in the morning on a Saturday. Sleeping, for instance. Sleeping was a big one. But here she was, holding one arm up to shield her head from the rain as she and Oremon took off running through their neighborhood. Whenever the street lights flickered, it cast the street into total darkness, with only the screen of her D-Rive -- held tightly in the hand not serving as a makeshift umbrella -- for light.

They were on the lookout for a champion-level digimon. Though she couldn't be entirely sure what _Stegomon_ was, she had a hunch.

Meghan was, she realized, getting better at creeping in and out of the house without making a sound, which wasn't exactly a skill she was proud of, but it was proving useful. In the past week, the digimon emergences had not significantly slowed down, and it was only their quick action that had prevented it from becoming the full-on citywide crisis it could have become (as opposed to the minor crisis it _was_ to their little group of nine).   
Some of the digimon _had_ been spotted, and a few incidents had been captured in shaky, glitchy cellphone footage, but... well, everything paled after the last Draugmon fight, huh?

... she really still didn't want to run any risks.

"We have to be getting close, yes?" Oremon said over his shoulder, a few feet ahead of Meghan. It hadn't emerged _too_ far away from them, and the lights were flickering, which was as good an indication as any that it was at least in the vicinity... indeed, before long at all, they heard the thundering footsteps of something very large, trudging along as fast as it could, coming up the street that they were about to merge into.

Meghan looked down at her D-Rive, but just as soon as she did she knew she didn't have to.

Stegomon -- who, unsurprisingly, was a stegosaurus -- ran, with stomping footsteps, into the halo of light of the streetlight ahead of them. It was large, and green, with orange markings crisscrossing its body. Dozens of massive knife-like spikes that lined its back, and a similar metal composed the spikes on its tail and its huge blunt claws.   
Its eyes were wild and its lips were pulled back in a snarl, baring teeth far too sharp for a herbivore. It tossed its head to whip away the rainwater, setting its gaze intently on goat and girl.

Part of its body appeared to glitch out slightly.   
That'd been happening more and more, this past week.

"Alright," Oremon said gruffly, bracing himself. "Let's get this over with, then." Meghan took a half-step back, preparing her D-Rive. The faster they dealt with this, the better. Stegomon seemed to have much the same idea, as with a roar that shook the air, it bounded forward, rushing towards Oremon.

The lightbulbs in the streetlamps flickered eratically and with the crackling sound of a fuse blowing, they cut out entirely, casting the entire street in darkness-- or, rather, the street would have been entirely dark, if not for the orange glow that immediately engulfed Oremon and Meghan's D-Rive.

They didn't, however, need that orange light to know that in the blink of an eye, Stegomon was nowhere to be seen.

Oremon faltered, the glow fading from his body before his form began to change.

"W-- what?"

Meghan blinked a couple times, her body still tense. She looked down at her D-Rive-- the screen was still on, but the only thing on the radar was the little goat-head-shaped dot at its center signifying Oremon. The pounding in her ears replaced Stegomon's thudding footsteps, and the rain muffled any sounds in the distance.

 

The lights didn't come back on.

The entire walk back was wet and uncomfortable and tense, as they were waiting -- with every step they took -- for Stegomon to reappear behind their backs. They would have hung around longer, but...   
Well, nobody wants to stand around in the rain at 2 AM on a pitch-black street. Not even people with talking goats as their bodyguards. It would have been in vain, anyway, as it never reappeared.

 

***

Oremon spent much of the rest of the night very tense, and sleeping very poorly as a result. Every sound louder than the patter of rain stirred him.   
He knew it wasn't likely, but every time he looked to the window, he expected to see shiny eyes and white feathers.

It never happened, but considering that the only other times a digimon had vanished like that had been when a little white squirrel-dragon had been running interference, he felt like he was justified in his concern.

He'd been having bad dreams for the last couple weeks, anyway. They had already been making his sleep less restful than he'd rather it be, so he didn't feel like he was missing out on all that much.

 

***

It was not a fluke.   
Not that anyone _really_ expected it to be when Meghan told them about it, because that would mean things taking a turn for the better (or at least not for the worse), but, you know, it's always fun to dream.

"Mother fucker," Xander hissed under his breath.

"It vanish?" Corymon said, glancing over her shoulder. She was flying high above Atlas Park, with Xander on her back. They had been in pursuit of a signal, only to have it go up in proverbial smoke just when they were getting close.

It wasn't just him and Meghan, either; everyone else had started reporting that emergents they had been in pursuit of had vanished without a trace over the past few days. The problem wasn't just that they were vanishing, wasting everyone's time and energy. It wasn't even that they still caused property damage in the short time that they trudged around before vanishing. Most of them stuck around for a few minutes, just long enough for them to _think_ they stood a chance of heading them off. This had led to people reporting seeing giant bears in alleyways and talking cats ripping slash marks in the roofs of their cars, with no way to follow up or confirm any of it.

No, the _problem_ was the fact that the fakeout emergences were _on top_ of the ones that actually _did_ stick around long enough to fight. Some of them even vanished mid-fight, to rub salt in the wound.

It was getting harder and harder to not feel exhausted, like they were running around like beheaded chickens. Even with nine people on the job, not everyone was available all the time.

Xander was, in fact, getting _real fuckin' tired_ of this game of wack-a-mole. He had better things to be doing on his Friday afternoon.   
... and yet, here he was.

They were going to have to start calling it off sooner than later, because the skies were threatening rain. (This wasn't surprising, considering where they lived, but it was still annoying.)

"One more lap around just to make sure?" Corymon suggested, and Xander sighed. He was getting bolder about riding on Corymon's back; he held on with one hand while he pocketed his D-Rive and pull out his phone.

"Yeah, may as well," he said, starting to swipe a very strongly phrased version of _false alarm again_ into the group chat.

Corymon's ears twitched.   
She couldn't be sure, but she swore she heard something-- or maybe she felt it.

 

***

"Again?" Raumon said, frowning as he peered over from the foot of Natalie's bed.

"Sounds like it," Natalie said, sighing as she rested her cheek on her hand. She had been reading Xander's complaints in the chat out loud for Raumon's benefit. They had only just gotten home, but relaxation simply wasn't on the docket yet.

They both direly wished they could relax-- that they could take refuge in the fact that so many of the emergences lately had turned out to be fake-outs. They all did, and they couldn't afford to. Some digimon didn't just vanish unless they were defeated-- and the digimon that had been emerging overall had only continued their trend of being wild and feral.

More than that-- there was the fact that it was happening at all, and that was enough to cause no small amount of consternation. Any development had to be treated as something dangerous-- especially when their problem was _something attempting to force a connection open_... well. More emergent digimon, and especially more shakily-emergent digimon, were not good signs.   
But what could they do?

Natalie and Raumon had been combing their brains for the past couple weeks, and Natalie couldn't shake how damn _helpless_ she felt to do anything other than take care of emergent digimon when they showed up. Even _that_ was starting to get harder and harder to keep on top of.

She sighed and set her phone face-down. There was only so much she could do.

Raumon sighed, looking over at his partner with concern, but he said nothing. He settled back down into his little blanket-nest.

Natalie's phone buzzed with another message, rattling loudly against her desk, a mere ten minutes later-- juuuust long enough for her to maybe start relaxing, and to be pulled back out of it. Of course.

She hummed through her nose and picked her phone up. On the screen were three words from Xander:

_fuck  
strike that_

Natalie blinked and furrowed her brow, and read these messages out to Raumon. The two of them exchanged slightly concerned looks.

"That's... troubling," Raumon said slowly.

The power surged.

"Oh, goddammit," Natalie said quietly.

 

***

Xander and Corymon dove out of the sky to avoid... well, what Xander's D-Rive was telling him was called Wingdramon-- and, more worryingly, it was telling him that it was an ultimate level.   
The massive blue dragon had materialized practically right in front of them, its enormously long, whip-like tail lashing behind it as it glitched and distorted its way out of thin air. It didn't seem to be entirely aware of its surroundings just yet, which was the saving grace.

Xander wondered if he had ever actually seen a digimon in the middle of emerging, and he looked to the sky as he and Corymon landed on the ground.

It was... bizarrely unnerving. Parts of the digimon's distorted body began to re-align, forcibly snapping into recognizable forms. A bone-white mask on its face; a lance-like structure sticking out of its back over its head, large spike-like frills on its arms.   
It didn't stay still; it flew forward without flapping its wings, circling like a vulture, silhouetted against the grey cloud sky.

"Wing Blast!" a roaring voice echoed from far above -- no prizes for guessing it was Wingdramon. With that call as its only warning, the very air shook so hard with a shockwave blast that it almost knocked Xander off his feet, this far below on the ground.

"Fuck," Corymon said, gritting her teeth.

_if you're northside get your ass outside and look up right now_

That was the politest way Xander could phrase what he meant to say.

 

***

While Wingdramon soared above north of the river, a similar yet distinct problem had emerged on the south side of town.

It moved rapidly at first, and Natalie almost swore she could feel the ground shaking as it did; but once it settled into the vicinity of the park, a little dot labelled _Groundramon. Ultimate level._ came to rest.

Groundramon was -- as it turned out -- a massive green quadrupedal dragon, solidly built and the size of a schoolbus. In place of wings, a pair of secondary arms with massive red digger-claws sprouted out of its shoulderblades. A spiked ball like a morning-star adorned the end of its shortish, thick tail, and what looked like cannons emerged out of its forearms' elbows. The question _what hole in the ground did this thing crawl out of_ was clear and literal; the parking lot had cracked and buckled even where it hadn't been dug straight through, leaving a massive tunnel hole from which it had apparently emerged.

Natalie would have liked for backup, really she would have; but by the time she had gotten there, Groundramon had already determined that it had a bit of a grievance with things like _trees_ and _cars_ and _public property_. Every time it took a step the ground shook, and it swung its tail and wing-arms around recklessly, taking out anything unfortunate enough to be close to it. Its heavy footfalls left a picnic table crushed like a cheap plastic toy and massive foot-shaped craters in the soft earth.

(What chance was Raumon going to stand if he couldn't safely digivolve to ultimate...?)

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

Well, they were about to find out.

"Black Bloom!"

Groundramon's back was turned, trudging as it was towards the trees that lined the stream, and as Doctorimon threw his black rose like a dagger... it had about as much effect as attempting to throw actual rose petals. The dragon's metallic scales practically reflected the attack.   
At least it got the dragon's attention.

On the downside, it got the dragon's attention. It whipped its head around, baring rows of sharp teeth, and its eyes were wild. Its pupils were restricted, and -- like so many digimon had these past weeks -- for a moment, its body seemed to distort and shift just the barest bit. It swung its tail and took out trees like twigs.

"Giga Crack!" Groundramon roared, and with a monumental effort, it heaved its entire massive body into a jump. It didn't jump high, but it didn't need to, as when it contacted the ground again. From the point of impact, all around it, the ground began to crack into massive fissures. As Natalie stumbled backwards to get out of danger, Doctorimon leapt deftly to avoid falling into one of the cracks himself. He prepared his staff to fire off another attack, but--   
"Scrapless Claw!"

Groundramon had, apparently, been prepared for this. The extra arms on its back slammed together, catching Doctorimon between them, like someone clapping their hands to kill a gnat.

The plague doctor hissed in pain, his teeth gritted as Groundramon's hands separated and he fell to earth. The cracks, thankfully, had begun to knit back together by the time Doctorimon hit the ground. Small blessings.   
"Face of Judgment!" Doctorimon yelled before he even got up fully. With the judging face of his staff turned towards Groundramon, a stream of black fire spilled forth, licking against Groundramon's lustrous scales.

Groundramon rumbled in what sounded like a humorless laugh, and Doctorimon felt his heart sink.

"Spirit Ripper!"

Banshemon's voice preceded her appearance, and the appearance of her glowing claws preceded the appearance of the rest of her. Glowing claws slashed through Groundramon's thick hide, and Banshemon faded into view on the other side of the dragon.

"Megaton Hammer Crush!" Groundramon swung its tail, catching Banshemon on its spikes. The ghost was hurled at great force into mass of broken trees and she had to disentangle herself, ripping her robes and bandages slightly in the process.   
There was no time to think, thugh, because not a moment later-- "Scrapless Claw!" Groundramon's appendages reached out for Doctorimon again. Doctorimon only barely managed to somersault out of the way as the dragon's hands smashed together.   
Good thing, too-- he wasn't feeling so great about taking another one of those straight-on.

Peter ran up to Natalie, huffing.   
"I miss anything?" he said, trying to sound collected and unaffected, but he had seen Banshemon take the brunt of that tail-smash, and he couldn't pretend that well.

"Show's just starting," Natalie said, shaking her head.

She had no idea.

 

***

"We're not going to be able to do shit unless it comes down!"

Xander's message had not gone unheeded. Both Sam and Meghan had been quick to come running, but Frekimon's complaint was a valid one. Even with them on the ground, primed and ready to attack, they could only do it when Corymon was able to lure it down.

"I'm doing the best I can!" Corymon called back, frustration clear in her voice. She had to try and bait Wingdramon down, but the thing was... Wingdramon was faster than her, and the fact that it was stronger was a given. She felt like she was playing with fire.   
The only blessing was that it didn't seem to be catching on that every time it dove at Corymon, and kept falling for the same trick, allowing Frekimon to hit it squarely with a fireball, or for Ibexmon to shoot one of his rock spires out of the ground as it passed.

Or, alternatively, it didn't notice, or didn't think it was important enough to take note of.

Take your pick on which was better: it was too feral to care, or too strong to care.

They had tried to find as open a space as they could, but there weren't a lot of options unless they wanted to try to lure it towards the edges of the city-- which they didn't really want to try to do.

Industrial district it was.

Corymon frowned, and she had an idea, but... it'd be risky.   
Hell, this entire _thing_ was risky. She may as well.

"Hurricane Blitz!" Corymon cried, whipping a sphere of wind around herself. She surged upwards in the air, only to pull back sharply, sending the sphere sailing past herself. It soared right into Wingdramon's path, and the blue dragon growled, shaking its head like it was about to sneeze. It looked around, its eyes settling on Corymon.

The bat nodded once to herself and dove, while Frekimon and Ibexmon braced themselves. Wingdramon followed, gaining quickly on Corymon as they descended. The bat pulled out of her dive and flew parallel to the ground. When they passed overhead, Frekimon and Ibexmon took their chances.

"New Moon Fire!"

"Terra Spear!"

Ibexmon's spire of rock shot out of the ground when he slammed his hooves down, and both it and Frekimon's green fireball smashed into Wingdramon's underbelly. The dragon, yet again, didn't seem to notice the attacks at all outside of mild annoyance, and kept its eyes on Corymon ahead of it. It was about to catch up, but Corymon kept going.   
She would have pulled up, drawn the dragon back into the air, but--

"What is she--" Sam muttered quietly, brow furrowed, but a moment later, when he looked at what Corymon was flying towards, he understood.

Just ahead of her were two closely-packed, boarded-up warehouses. She'd just be able to fit if she tucked her wings in and barrelled through with her forward inertia, but Wingdramon wouldn't be so lucky.

And this is exactly what Corymon did. She sped up, as fast as she could, and pulled her wings in flush to her body moments before she entered the gap between the two warehouses.

"You idiot," Xander muttered, with a sense of admiration and respect tinging the insult. Meghan cringed visibly, awaiting the inevitable result of Wingdramon being in close pursuit.

Indeed, just as predicted, the dragon crashed into the buildings with an earth-shaking roar. As it smashed into the brick, the onlookers could see its body begin to glitch slightly. Corymon looped back around, returning to her allies on the ground, while Wingdramon tried to right itself and stand again. It shook its head, growling as it whipped around. It was significantly more awkward on the ground, but they weren't stupid enough to think this meant they were safe.

"Great," Ibexmon said gruffly, "now it's mad."

"Now it's not in the air," Frekimon said, pounding one fist into the opposite palm.

"Now it's not going to try and fuck shit up anywhere else," Corymon added, bracing herself as she landed.

"Blaze Sonic Breath!" Wingdramon roared, opening its mouth wide. It released no flames, merely a shockwave of super-heated energy that even the humans, taking refuge a short ways away, could feel.

 

***

If you're keeping track, yes, there _is_ a person missing from the groups we've gone over thus far-- but don't worry. She wasn't trying to keep her head down and stay out of things.   
Not this time.

It was easy to go unnoticed in the furor of Groundramon and Wingdramon, but a third digimon had emerged as well. Where? Why, if Wingdramon was north of the river, and Groundramon was south of the river, then that left...

A massive red sea serpent by the name of WaruSeadramon writhed in the Harper River, striking out wildly with its long body. It opened its mouth in a roar as electricity sparked around its golden horn.   
"Thunder Javelin!"

It shot the electricity in a lightning-bolt, but Melemon was unperturbed. He grit his teeth and bore down, his body shaking uncontrollably, but he powered through it, as he had done multiple times already.   
Melemon's primary directive right now was just to keep WaruSeadramon away from either of the bridges, but he had to get closer to do that. He didn't have any way to attack from a distance-- all he was able to do right now was get the sea serpent's attention, and that was working, but--

"You can freeze water, can't you?!" Lily yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth, hanging back as she was from the shoreline.   
It was worth a shot.

Icy energy swirled around Melemon's paws, and he reached out for the water.   
If he was wrong, and he couldn't freeze it, then he was putting himself in incredible danger-- he didn't want the water to amplify WaruSeadramon's electrical attacks, after all.

But before his massive icy claws even touched the water, it froze instantly thanks to the frigid energy around them. Ice spidered out, freezing so fast its expansion was audible, and Melemon tentatively -- but knowing he had no time to waste -- placed a heavy foot down to test if it could bear his weight.

It held.

Melemon grinned a joyless grin and intensified the energy swirling around his paws, and the river in front of him began to freeze over.

WaruSeadramon fired another lightning bolt, and again, Melemon gritted his teeth as the pain and voltage wracked his body.

If this thing vanished before he got the chance to give it some payback, he was going to be _pissed_.

 

***

As it turned out, it never stopped being easy to lure the humans and their partners out by just dragging a few digimon through and causing a little mischief. It had worked with the Meramon and Drimogemon and so on and so on, what felt like so long ago; it worked again now, just on a larger scale.

Well, hey, he had to make sure it would be urgent enough to get everyone on it.

It was easier than ever, with the rapidity with which the connection was strengthening-- he could pull through a trio of ultimates with almost no trouble at all. More and more digimon had been able to emerge-- sure, a lot of them were still dragged back and unable to fully emerge, pulled back at the last second.   
He couldn't help but wonder what happened to them.

Torn apart when the digital world dragged them back, probably.   
Pity, really. It was the only reason he wasn't willing to try to go the whole hog. It still wasn't stable enough to safely transfer enough of his data if he had gone... well.   
He could save that as a surprise for a rainy day. He had to focus on the present, for now.

The fact that they'd likely be a bit worn down after being dragged out into the open was just gravy, really; he wasn't worried. Not this time. He just wanted to make sure that nobody was hiding in the wings.

 

***

Banshemon and Doctorimon knew there was only one thing they could do-- keep Groundramon occupied until someone who could digivolve to ultimate could get there.   
It felt absolutely goddamn horrible, but if either of them did it, they'd risk doing more damage than they prevented.

Luckily for them, their prayers weren't doomed to go unanswered.

"Aura Stream!"

A crackling beam of yellow energy shot out from behind where Natalie and Peter were staying out of the line of fire. A blur of burnt-orange and brown rushed past them as Himamon ran onto the scene, her massive tail trailing behind her like a banner. Her attack dissipated harmlessly against Groundramon's hard scales, but she didn't waste time in following up. As Groundramon turned its head to look, she rushed into melee range.   
"Chakra Strike!" the red panda yelled, delivering a hard uppercut to the dragon's jaw with her claws glowing with that same gold energy.

This also had... very little noticable effect aside from dazing Groundramon slightly, but still, that was something. Himamon bounded backwards before Groundramon had a chance to retaliate, re-joining with Doctorimon and Banshemon.

Jen came jogging up in short order after her partner. "Sorry we're late," she said, looking a little out of breath. "Ryan and Shitomon went to the north side of town, since it sounded like they needed someone who could fly. He would've gotten here to help you out sooner otherwise, yeah?"

"Better late than never," Natalie said, sighing with something between resignation and relief. Doctorimon and Banshemon were doing their best just to avoid being completely wrecked by Groundramon's attacks, and the section of the park that they were fighting in was...

Well.

It'd seen better days.

It may never have seen worse ones, honestly.

"Let's go, then," Jen said, lifting her D-Rive as it began to glow, and Himamon was engulfed by white and gold as she rushed forward.

"Himamon, conduction evolve to... Shaolimon! Dragon's Breath!"   
The light hadn't even fully faded from her body when the red panda monk launched her first proper attack. She pulled her mysterious cask out of nowhere, took a deep pull of the amber liquid inside, and spat out a stream of yellow flames at Groundramon's face at point-blank range.

"Scrapless Claw!" Groundramon roared, slamming its secondary hands around Shaolimon with a force that even the onlookers could feel.

Shaolimon hissed with pain, and this was only made worse when Groundramon's hands grabbed onto her tail and used it to fling her into the air. Its wing-hands spread wide, prepared to slam closed around Shaolimon again on her way back down.

"Face of Judgment!" Doctorimon cried, and the orb atop his staff began to glow. He rushed forward and, only once he was almost directly on top of Groundramon, faced the vengeful mask towards Groundramon, releasing black flames directly into its eyes.   
It roared and hissed with pain, flinching away. The flames had quite apparently temporarily blinded it.

At the same moment that Doctorimon moved, Banshemon shot into the air like a bullet. She caught the airborne Shaolimon in her arms. Shaolimon seemed momentarily confused, but she nodded her thanks to Banshemon once she figured out what had just happened.

"Let me down, I'll take care of it before he gets hurt," Shaolimon said, inclining her head towards Doctorimon.

Banshemon nodded and let Shaolimon go, and the red panda practically leapt out of the ghost's arms. Her claws crackled with golden energy as she dive-bombed the dragon.   
"Eighteen Paw Strike!" she cried the moment before impact, sinking her claws into the dragon's scaly back. With a mighty, sickening cracking sound, her energy-charged claws smashed straight through Groundramon's hard scales.

Groundramon stumbled backwards, swinging its mace-tail wildly, smashing everything behind it with reckless abandon. Shaolimon leapt away, freeing the way for the other two to say their pieces.

"Face of Judgment!"

"Banshee's Call!"

Black flames and white ghosts rushed at Groundramon, and though they still seemed to have little effect, the attacks that struck near Groundramon's broken scales did seem to actually affect it, as it hissed as though salt were being rubbed into a wound.

"Give it another go!" Jen yelled to her partner, and Shaolimon nodded her quiet assent, taking advantage of Groundramon's temporary blindness from Doctorimon's flames to rush in.

"Eighteen-Paw Strike!" She dug her claws into the dragon's side, and once again, its scales broke away, revealing what looked like rotten flesh underneath. (Call Shaolimon crazy, but she wasn't sure that was... supposed to be what it looked like...)   
She didn't get much time to admire it, becasue as her powerful attacks struck the dragon, it began to shift and distort-- this time, not the glitchy distortion, but the interruptions of a digimon who was on the verge of defeat.

She glanced to Doctorimon and Banshemon. She nodded, and they needed no further instruction. The red panda leapt away, procuring her keg once more.

"Dragon's Breath!"

"Black Bloom!"

"Banshee's Call!"

This time, the white ghosts rushed around in a shower of razor-sharp black petals and a stream of golden fire; the three attacks collided on Groundramon, and in an explosion of light, Groundramon became a cloud of data.   
The cloud of data hung around for a split second and glitched noticably before it organized itself into beams of light that shot into the three humans' D-Rives.

"You know," Doctorimon said, "at least we actually got to defeat that one."

Banshemon nodded slowly, flexing her claws, and looking to the sky. It was still threatening rain.   
"Do you think we should see if the others need help?" she said.

Even if they had wanted to say anything else, though, they were violently distracted by the sudden loud screech that all three of their D-Rives -- yes, even Jen's -- emitted.

 

***

Because the nature of storytelling isn't temporally locked, let's back up a moment.   
It will pay off in a little bit.

You're welcome.

Wingdramon was, indeed, now just _pissed off_.

No time like the present.

"Headstrong Charge!"

"Ravenous Hunter!"

Ibexmon and Frekimon both bounded forward, horns and claws -- respectively -- at the ready. They had a little more luck than their allies were having on the south side of the river, at least; where Groundramon's scales were metalic and hard, Wingdramon was a bit less defense-oriented, and they were able to tear some decent gashes in the dragon's hide, but it barely seemed to notice the damage.

"Blaze Sonic Breath!" it roared, releasing another hyper-heated sonic blast from its mouth. Once again, even the humans watching from a relatively safe distance had to lift their arms to shield their faces from the intense heat; it was far worse for the digimon in much closer proximity.

"Black Stinger!" Corymon cried, leaping into the air and backwards, her tail curling underneath her. She fired off the series of black arrowheads from her tail, for all the good they did, crashing into Wingdramon's face and doing middling amounts of damage.

Wingdramon thrashed its tail, smashing a bit more of the buildings behind it, and shook its head as though it were shaking off flies. With a snarl, it kicked into the air, and rose up incredibly quickly-- so quickly, in fact, that--

"Wing Blast!"

The very air vibrated those present down to their very core. Any glass in the warehouse windows that hadn't been smashed already shattered instantly as Wingdramon rose up into the air, soaring out of range in the blink of an eye.

"Dammit!" Ibexmon snarled, rearing down and gritting his teeth, but there was a silver lining.

"Southern Cross!" A beam of cross-shaped light came shooting out from beyond a smokestack, and even though it missed Wingdramon entirely, it was still as good as signal as anything that the cavalry had arrived.   
It was immediately followed by:

"Hey, hey! Wait until I'm not on your back!"

"Hey, there's something to be said for stylish entrances," Malakhimon reasoned right back, smiling faintly.

Malakhimon swooped down and allowed Ryan to climb off of her back, and she wasted no time kicking back up into the air after Wingdramon. Ryan held his D-Rive close to his chest as both it and his partner began to glow crimson.

"Malakhimon, conduction evolve to... Eudaemon!"

The large shape of Malakhimon shrunk down, but the rising form of Eudaemon soaring into the sky after Wingdramon was a very welcome one.

"Christ," Xander said, shaking his head and huffing. "Took you long enough." He wasn't even speaking loud enough for Ryan to hear him as he came running over.

"Thanks for the assist," Sam said wryly, and this _was_ said for Ryan to hear.

"Sorry about the delay," he said, shaking his head. "There's-- a bit happening."

"Define?" Meghan said, frowning.

"Two other emergents, both ultimate level," Ryan said, glancing over his shoulder from whence they had come. "Jen's helping with one, and I think Eli's getting on the other--"

"Explode Sonic Lance!" Wingdramon roared from above, and suddenly dropped into a nose-dive towards Eudaemon. The lance on its back began to glow faintly, though that was easy to miss in all the chaos. When it was getting closer to the angel digimon, the dragon suddenly pulled back, but the lance continued on, sailing in a perfect trajectory towards Eudaemon.

"Purge the Wicked!" Eudaemon cried, a spear of pure light forming in her grip. She held it up to parry Wingdramon's attack. Unfortunately, the dragon's lance exploded on contact with her spear, evaporating both weapons. She wasn't knocked out of the air, but she was blown backwards almost crashing into a smokestack--

Until Corymon shot into the way, cushioning the angel's trajectory.   
"Gotta pay more attention, when they say things explode, you usually don't want to try to deflect it in melee range, you know?" the bat said, smirking.

Eudaemon hissed in pain, but nodded a slightly reluctant thanks to Corymon as she spread her wings and launched herself towards Wingdramon.

"Ruby Oculus!" she cried, gathering up all the light that the red jewels all over her body produced before firing in it a concussive beam. Wingdramon was still hanging relatively close because of the dive-bomb it had had to do for its last attack, so Eudaemon's attack hit true, smashing the dragon straight in the chest.

It roared, gritting its teeth.

"Blaze Sonic--!"

"Purge the Wicked!" Eudaemon yelled, another spear of light appearing in her hands. This time, she didn't hold onto it-- she lobbed it straight at Wingdramon. It didn't hit Wingdramon as directly as her beam had-- but she hadn't been aiming for that. The spear tore through the membrane of Wingdramon's, well, wing, and the dragon faltered. Even though it didn't have to beat its wings to fly, damaging its wings still seemed to be a viable strategy.

Noted.

"Black Stinger!" Corymon cried, launching her attack this time not at the dragon's face or underbelly, but at its other wing-- and this, too, seemed to work. With both of its wings damaged, Wingdramon faltered, falling a few meters.

And that was close enough.

"Terra Spear!" Ibexmon cried, stomping the ground and firing a sharpened spire of rock straight through one of Wingdramon's wings.

"New Moon Fire!" Frekimon called, and her green fireball crashed right into Wingdramon's other wing, and the dragon fell all the way to the ground with a harsh crash. As it crashed into the ground, it distorted slightly.

"Terra Spear!"

"New Moon Fire!"

"Hurricane Blitz!"

"Ruby Oculus!"

Green fire, red energy, the swirling ball of wind, and the razor-sharp spear of rock springing out directly under its feet all struck it at the same time, and with an earth-shaking roar, it exploded into light and data.

However, this group didn't even get the couple minutes of downtime that the southern team had-- not five seconds between the light shooting in equal parts into their D-Rives, all D-Rives present began to emit that horrible, horrible screeching noise.

It was not a result of trying to process Wingdramon's data, let's just make that much clear. It was something far more troubling.

 

***

We need to step back in time one more time, just to get everyone up to speed.   
It will pay off soon.

Melemon growled as he bounded across the ice he was creating on the river. WaruSeadramon was smashing his footholds as quickly as he could make them, either directly or with electric shocks and dark whirlpools of energy. He hadn't been able to get close enough to land a single attack on the sea serpent; he had only been able to distract it. He just had to get a little bit closer... he attempted to jump from one ice floe to the next.

"Thunder Javelin!"

"Dammit!" Melemon growled, still in mid-air. "Icicle Shroud!"   
A thick coating of ice surrounded his entire body, and was smashed apart almost immediately by the bolt of lightning that WaruSeadramon fired his way. He scrambled onto a platform of ice. He generated more icy energy around his body to freeze the water as quickly as he could, not wanting to get drenched if he could possibly help it.

WaruSeadramon growled, eyes narrowed, and sparks began to gather around its horn once more--

"Moon Bomb!"

Hokkaimon came bounding out, running quickly out of the street and into the river. The fox deftly leapt from chunk of ice to chunk of ice, his small size proving to be a boon as he bounded close to WaruSeadramon and threw a glowing orb directly in the sea serpent's face.

The sparks dissipated as WaruSeadramon looked for what had distracted it, granting Melemon the chance to stabilize himself on the ice once more. He glanced over at Hokkaimon, face quizzical, but the kitsune looked over at him and--

Well. It was hard to say _winked_ because his eyes looked like the black eyeholes on a mask, but Melemon had never seen something quite so decisively convey the _idea_ of a wink.   
"Don't worry, buddy bear," the fox said. "Backup's here. Hold your applause."

"I wasn't going to," Melemon muttered, but he paused and nodded his gratitude regardless.

Lily whipped around. Eli was taking his sweet time crossing the street over to the sidewalk above the shore, but she could see his D-Rive held in his hand.

"Just us, huh? Guess everyone else got the fun ones, so us cool kids have to make do with two," he said, stuffing his other hand in his pocket. "Really clever with the ice, though. Creative. I dig it."

Hokkaimon, standing out on the ice, and Eli's D-Rive both began to glow bright cyan.

"Hokkaimon, conduction evolve to... Yokaimon!"

Even with his massively increased size, Yokaimon seemed feather-light on the floating ice. The fox grinned, his seven tails fanning out behind him. "Hey, buddy bear, gimme a foothold, will ya? I'd rather not get my fur wet."

Melemon didn't need to be asked; he was already working on freezing as much of the water as he could, and Yokaimon elegantly stepped onto the more solid footing that the bear provided.

"Much obliged," Yokaimon said, again not-quite winking. "Keep at it. I've got a plan."

"Thunder Javelin!" WaruSeadramon roared, its eyes tracking Yokaimon.

The fox leapt moments before WaruSeadramon fired its attack, landing on a broken piece of ice; the lightning bolt shot into the water instead of smashing the ice that Melemon was building up. Melemon immediately understood.

Yokaimon was pulling WaruSeadramon's attention away from him-- giving Melemon a chance to freeze as much water as he could. Not only could he get close enough to WaruSeadramon to attack the sea serpent-- he might be able to trap it.

Yokaimon bounded from stray chunk of ice to stray chunk of ice, not even trying to attack-- he waved his tails and snickered, making loud barking noises whenever WaruSeadramon's attention started to drift.   
It didn't even notice that the water immediately around it was starting to freeze.

"Arctic Impact!" Melemon roared, now that he was finally close enough. His claws swirled with ice and he smashed them into WaruSeadramon's spine, and the feral ultimate roared, trying to whip around.

But... the water around it had been frozen. It whipped its head in confusion, attempting to thrash its tail.

"Once more with feeling! Moon Claw!" Yokaimon yelled, suddenly leaping towards WaruSeadramon with his claws glowing brilliant blue.

"Arctic Impact!"

Both bear and fox's claws smashed into WaruSeadramon at the same time, causing it to writhe, sparks crackling around its horn.

"Thunder Blade!" it roared, wrenching its head around so it could attempt to stab out at Melemon with an electrified horn.

"Icicle Shroud!" Melemon growled, defensive ice covering his body again. It absorbed the brunt of the attack, even though the impact of it sent him skidding backwards across the ice he had formed.

Yokaimon, though, took the chance. "Luna Wave!" he cried, drawing the string on his bag and firing a powerful beam of blue-white energy at the sea serpent.

By the time the light of the fox's attack faded, WaruSeadramon was going up in light, itself, and swirled in twin beams into the D-Rives of the waiting Eli and Lily.

Without looking at her, Eli raised his fist to Lily for her to fist-bump it. She blinked a couple times, looked from Eli's face to his fist, and then bumped her knuckles against his.   
He smirked.

"Sorry we were late," he said, glancing over at her.

"I'm not gonna say it's fine," she said slowly, then she sighed and relaxed her shoulders. "But it's okay. It worked out alright."

Yokaimon was able to make his way back to dry land much faster than Melemon was able to; the bear had to carefully freeze the water in front of him, while the fox was feather-light and able to leap gracefully.   
"Come on, this ain't a race, so slow and steady won't win you anything," he taunted over his shoulder, and Melemon growled low in his throat, but said nothing.

When Melemon set foot on dry land again, though-- well. He was given quite a start when both Eli and Lily's D-Rives suddenly erupted in an unholy glitchy squeal.

Alright.

 _Now_ it's time to address it.

Their D-Rives began to screech at the exact same time that everyone else's did. Whether they were in the park, on the river, or in the industrial district, all nine D-Rives ignited with that horrible screech at the exact same time, and all of them did for the same reason.   
If they checked them -- and they all did, immediately -- that singular, shared reason would be immediately obvious.

On their radars, a glitchy dot had appeared in the dead center of downtown. Even without their input, its information box popped up, and they got the distinct feeling that this was, in fact, what was causing the noise.

Ņ̶͠i̵̵̢͞t̶̕h̢̧͠͠m҉̶̢o̢ņ̸͢ ̶m͜͏o̵̡͘͜n͘͢ ̛m̸͘͜͠ơ̶͢͟͡n̷̢͠҉͏ ͏̸̡̛͢m̶̧͘͡͝o͜͠n̵͘҉ ̷͘͢͞n̛͝͏i̴̢̕͠t͢͝h̶͜͞m̷̶͘͜͡o̕͞͝n͢͝͠͝ ͡͏̛͝͝i͜͢t̸h̸͏m̶̨o҉̕͡n̡͝҉ ̴̧u҉̵̵̕l҉̶t̨͢͟ ̡͜͡͡҉i҉̶̧ ̵̷̢m̸͢͡a͏҉̕͏͝t̴̷͢e̛҉͏̨͞ ̷̵͝m̵̕̕at͜͢ ͘͢͞͞m͏͡a͠t̢̧̡̛͝ę͜͏̨ ̴̷̧͘͜m̷̵ą͝͠t̡̡͏ȩ̶̶̶ ͘҉̛҉͢u͏͏̴͜͏l҉̢͟ ̸̷̢m̷̷̨͟͝a͡͞ ̷͏̨̕ţ̨̕̕͡į̨͞ ̨n͝i̴̵ţ͝h̡͟͝

The glitchy squeak began to die down quickly -- thank god -- but the glitchy, distorted _something_ on their radar remained.

 

***

Going towards the glitchy death-radar reading felt like walking directly into danger, but given their experience with things that caused their D-Rives to go apeshit, call it a hunch-- it could only have ended worse if they'd walked away.

 _is everyone getting that reading too?_ Natalie sent to the group chat.

Meghan was the first to answer. _yeah. heading in-- we have ryan, xander, sam, and me. you?_

_i have jen and peter with me. anyone know where lily is?_

_i'm fine,_ lily's message popped up -- a rare sight, as she hadn't been a huge talker even as she had integrated with the group more. _dude whose partner's a fox is with me too-- we're probably closest to downtown. waiting for backup before we go charging in._

 _probably smart,_ Xander said.

The thing was... nothing bad _seemed_ to be happening. Once their fights with their respective -dramons had concluded... there was no big catastrophe happening downtown, as far as they could tell. Lily and Eli were able to meet up with Natalie, Peter, and Jen as soon as they got across the bridge, and Xander, Meghan, Sam, and Ryan made a beeline for the location of the dot as well, promising to convene there.

Part of this was because they had straight up given up on subtlety, the digimon not even bothering to de-digivolve, meaning the digimon large enough to carry people did just that, and people certainly got out of their way in short order.

The dot for Nithmon, whatever it was, did not move, nor did it stop glitching.   
It was hard not to wonder why it had only appeared when everyone had been in range of it.

 

 

***

Before long, they convened in one spot-- a city square of sorts; the only remarkable landmark was an old, ornate fountain that stood starkly in the center. The rest was pavement stones laid out in what some city planner probably thought was very aesthetically pleasing, encircled by benches and meticulously-trimmed trees and hedges.   
There was no sign of any digimon that weren't already accounted for.

Those who had ridden on their digimon (or been carried by them) returned their feet to solid ground, and they glanced around, keeping their backs to a building. Right now, everyone was on high alert; they felt they had the right to be.   
The humans all looked to their D-Rives with varying degrees of uncertainty, to confirm that the dot hadn't moved. It hadn't; they were almost on top of the glitchy dot, and by all rights, it should have been apparent to them from where they were standing.

"Yeah, that's not suspicious at all," Frekimon said, glancing around and sniffing at the air, but she didn't detect anything, and she pinned her ears back, frowning.

"If this is another bullshit fakeout, I'm going to..." Ryan muttered, but Natalie held out a hand to shush him.

"Imma let you finish," she said, "but shut up for a second."   
He did; they never found out what he'd do if this was another bullshit fakeout. Xander snorted and opened his mouth to say something, but she held out her hand at him, too, signalling that he, too, needed not to commentate.

They could hear sirens in the distance and the faint bubbling of the fountain. They could hear cars honking as they were still backed up on the bridges.

What they did not hear was people-- the square was entirely bereft of life but for them.

Downtown.

On a Friday afternoon.

"Spooky," Corymon said, her ears twitching.

"Something is very wrong," Doctorimon said quietly, inclining his head just barely towards Natalie. She nodded tersely, looking around without moving her head.

"Be on your guard," Euedaemon said, holding her hands out, light starting to coalesce into a spear in her grip.

Something fizzled. They felt a-- not a chill, but a kind of numbing tingle wash over them for just a split second, the kind that made the hair on the backs of their necks stand up.

"Vedfolnir's Wings!"

A voice cried from above. Eighteen pairs of eyes immediately snapped upwards, but they didn't look up for long, as a hail of feathers, glowing red but shining so brightly they hurt to look at, filled their vision.

"Get down!"

It was impossible to tell who yelled that, because multiple people and digimon yelled it or some variation upon it at the same time. Digimon leapt in front of their partners almost as though by instinct, whether that meant Eudaemon leaping in front of Ryan with the jewels on her body starting to glow, Banshemon throwing her arms in front of her own face as she immediately shot in front of Peter, or Melemon practically bowling Lily over in the interest of protecting her, and everything in between.

But the attack never connected-- not even with the digimon who had been preparing to take the metaphorical bullet.

When those who had closed their eyes dared to crack them back open, they saw the blazing-red feathers suspended in midair. They hung at various heights, but they had all stopped at least inches away from each and every one of the digimon and in the air between them. They shone so brightly it was difficult to see past them, but it was just as difficult to miss what had changed.

Perched like a gargoyle on top of the fountain was a humanoid shape with four feathered wings, resting one elbow on its knees and looking over at the gathered humans and digimon with what seemed to be mild, polite curiosity. The water in the fountain had stopped flowing as though it were paused in time.   
This was, presumably enough, Nithmon.

It wasn't an impressive height, just barely shy of four-and-a-half feet. Four long, feathered wings spread out behind its back, and a long, thick tail trailed behind it. Black claws adorned the hands that peeked out of flowing sleeves, as well as the toes of knee-high boots.

It was very pale in colour-- most of its body and its clothes alike were austere white and faded ivory. Both its wings and its clothes were white at the bases, fading into peachy yellow and dusty pink, while faded gold accessories glistened at the tops of its boots and around its upper arms. Its mostly desaturated colour scheme made the things that weren't pale stand out all the more.

First of all: it wore large hood, gathered into a cowl around its neck. The fabric was a deep, bloody crimson, a similar shade to the glowing feathers suspended in the air.   
Second: a symbol was emblazoned on the tabard it wore; this symbol was the same stark red as its hood. It was something like an inverted arrowhead shape that followed the contour of the triangular fabric, and it looked _weirdly_ familiar to the digimon, though none of them -- not even those with intact memories -- could place why.

Third, and most damningly: a vivid pink strange shiny orb fastened at its neck, and eyes that were both acid-green and vivid pink. Both its eyes and the strange orb were so shiny that they seemed to glow in the grey afternoon.   
As if the short, curved horns and the feathery wing-like ears poking through its hood weren't enough of a giveaway.

 

Nithmon placed his chin in his hand, tilting his head just-so.   
"You're late," he said. His voice was exactly the same as it had been when he had been Ratamon, though it sounded... slightly distorted, like he was speaking through some kind of filter. "I mean, I'm surprised as anyone that you're still this easy to lure out, but even so! Late. Time is money-- or, whatever."

"Fuck," Sam said flatly, managing to capture the feeling of the room (well, open-air town square, but you get it) in one syllable.

"You know, this all could have been avoided if you'd been a _little_ more cooperative," Nithmon said, tapping his chin as he looked at Lily and Brockmon, and then he grinned. "Or maybe it couldn't have been avoided. Hell if I know. I mean, I might be feeling a bit more charitable right now, but the rest of this," he gestured around, "who knows? This whole force-connecting the worlds thing has been pretty interesting!" he said, his tone downright amicable.

That probably accounted for the appearing-and-disappearing digimon, one supposed.

"You noticed anything weird on your end?" he said, unperturbed by the fact that he was basically monologuing.

For some reason, nobody felt overmuch like answering him. Maybe it had something to do with the blindingly-bright red feathers floating inches away from them, forcing them to hold their poses, whatever position they were in. Nobody really wanted to be the first one to discover what touching them would do.

Nithmon got to his feet, and as he moved, he distorted and glitched-- or maybe it was the air around him doing that, it was hard to tell. He raised his hands; in an instant, the red feathers hanging in the air disappeared. He stepped down to the ground, standing between his audience and the fountain.   
Nobody relaxed. The digimon tensed, and the humans all held their D-Rives tight, preparing for what felt like the inevitable.

"Be ready," Melemon said quietly, and Lily clutched her D-Rive, but even this small comment didn't go unnoticed.

Nithmon smiled for the billionth time. "What exactly is it you think you're going to do?" he said, looking quite pointedly at the digimon that were still in champion form. Eudaemon, Yokaimon, and Shaolimon all felt like he was looking straight through them, while the others felt the intense sensation of being stared at-- which was quite a feat, considering there were six of them.

The mockery was plain in Nithmon's voice. He didn't have to say it; his smile said that he knew already that they couldn't digivolve to ultimate to fight him-- that didn't _dare._   
They couldn't, and when the digimon glanced to their partners, uncertainly Nithmon's smile turned into a full grin.

"Purge the Wicked!" Eudaemon cried, hurling a spear of radiant light at Nithmon. When it was about to impact him-- well. There was a fizzling noise, and the space around Nithmon distorted slightly.

The spear smashed into the fountain, cracking the stone, and left Nithmon untouched.

"See, here's the thing," he said, glancing at Eudaemon. "Even if all nine of you _could_ evolve---" He paused. "Even if your partners would _allow_ you to, then you still wouldn't stand a chance against me."

"Luna Wave!"

"Dragon's Breath!"

As the two attacks, released in perfect synch, drew close to Nithmon, both the golden flames and the blue-white energy distorted. Unlike Eudaemon's spear, they did not continue past him; instead, they deflected off to the sides, shooting off in different tangents. As this happened, Eudaemon lunged forward, another spear forming in her hands.

"Purge the Wicked!"

"Stasis Matrix!" Nithmon cried, holding his hands out in front of him. In the blink of an eye, a red-pink eight-faced crystal surrounded Eudaemon, floating a few inches off the ground. The angel was captured as though in amber, frozen with her mouth open in her attack-call. Her spear didn't stop glowing, reflecting and refracting inside the crystal.

Nithmon looked almost amazed, like he hadn't quite had the chance to try out that attack yet and he was quite impressed by it.

Doctorimon leapt forward, and Nithmon drifted backwards a short distance, watching impassively.

Doctorimon didn't say a word as he rushed in and he swung his staff like a hammer; one of the masks impacted the crystal encasing Eudaemon, and pale cracks spread out from the point of impact.   
It was hard to tell if the sudden, intense shattering or Eudaemon's scream of pain the moment she was free was louder. She dropped like a stone, hitting the ground. Even though she was clearly in pain, she wasted no time in attempting to get back to her feet.

"Face of Judgement!" Doctorimon called, though he wasn't aiming the vengeful mask -- the one that spit black flames -- at Nithmon. He was aiming the mourning face at Eudaemon. When the sorrowful mask's beak fell further open, a stream of white flames poured out, licking over Eudaemon's body and doing no damage.

In fact, quite the opposite-- while it wasn't much, only a champion-level's power, she found it slightly easier to get to her feet, some of the pain numbed by the white fire.

"Very sweet of you," Nithmon mocked, "but I meant what I said. What, exactly, do you hope to do here?"

"We'll fight you," Ibexmon said decisively, stepping forward.

"And we'll find some way to drive you back to the god-forsaken rock you crawled out from under," Frekimon said, her teeth bared.

"Even if we have to catalyst evolve," Banshemon said, her voice quiet. "We have our friends." She glanced to Peter, only daring to look at him for a second before re-focusing on Nithmon.

"We have our allies," Doctorimon said, and even without visible eyes the glance he tossed in Eudaemon's direction was self-evident.

"And we just really, really, really want to ruin your plans," Corymon said, smirking.

Melemon said only three words, nodding once: "At any cost."

Nithmon only smiled.   
"That's fucking adorable," he said, and a glitchy, red-and-black energy pulsed around his claws. "Nithogg's Teeth!"

All around them, massive spikes comprised of that same distorted energy shot out of the ground. They were uncountably numerous, but nine in particular shot up underneath the feet of the digimon, impaling them immediately with the force of their protrusion.   
They seemed to not form around where the humans watched.

Curious.

That was hard to think about at the moment, though; the nine digimon immediately went up in their respective colours, replaced in a heartbeat by their rookie forms. The spikes vanished with a faint buzzing noise as the digimon de-digivolved.   
Nothing could have stopped their human partners from immediately running to their sides, and Nithmon grinned again.

Again, he seemed slightly surprised at how effective his attack had been, but more than pleased.

" _This_ is its power," he said, holding his hands out as they began to glow red and black again. He tilted his head and spoke with a childlike glee as he continued. "Imagine! Imagine! This is its power _weakened_! A _fragment_ of it, given to me, a small enough piece to fit through to this backwater shithole of a world!"

Nobody was paying attention to him -- they were too concerned checking over their partners to see if they were alright -- but he did't seem to mind that much.

(They were; they had simply already been tired out from their previous fights, and they were more than a little dazed.)

"You've all played your roles-- you know, I'm not going to say _well_ , because you've been a massive _pain in my ass_ , but well enough. Your jobs are done," he said, gesturing with one claw at the refugee digimon and Brockmon in turn. His gaze turned to Shitomon, Hulimon, and Lurumon. He paused, searching for words. "And you... well. You tried. Nice attempts, I suppose."   
He stepped forward, finding the exact center point between all of the pairs strewn around.

He paused for dramatic impact, and looked around. The digimon were coming more to their senses; with the peace of mind that this granted them, the humans had turned their attention to him, finally.

His claws began to glow again.

"But you know what? I'm done playing."

The glow began to spread out from his hands-- not around his body, but outwards into the air, expanding in a sphere. It shifted and distrorted the air inside it, scorching the stone on the ground. They could feel an overwhelming heat -- or possibly an unfathomable cold, it seemed to paradoxically be both.

It didn't move slowly; the humans and digimon alike only had the time to think that they _really_ didn't want to know what was going to happen to them when it reached them, before it grew to the point that it was about to engulf them.   
Luckily, they didn't have to find that out.

They were never so damn relieved to hear that unholy D-Rive screech.

The instant before any of them were touched by the expanding bubble of corruption, which was significantly less funny than that phrase might imply, the D-Rives activated with a passion and a fury, and that meant _they screeched like the gates of hell were being opened_.

And the bubble stopped growing as though something were stopping it.

"It must be..." Sam began, but he didn't get to finish his thought.

"What the hell," Jen muttered, flinching backwards. It was apparent she wasn't the only one thinking that.

Nithmon, standing at the center of it all, wore an expression of disgust and disbelief. He held his hands further out, like he was trying to force it; nothing happened.   
" _This wasn't supposed to happen_ ," he said, but the bubble around him filtered his speech as well, making it sound slightly garbled to those outside it-- that is to say, everyone present -- if they could even hear it over the D-Rive noise.

The sphere of corrupted energy wavered. It distorted, it shifted, and with a static buzz-- it vanished.   
Before they could even register this fact, Nithmon followed suit, blinking out of sight.

The D-Rives died down, and the square was left eerily, oppressively quiet once more.

"Wait--!" Meghan blurted, reaching her hand out towards where Nithmon had been a moment before. In his place was...

It looked almost like a tear in space, but 'tear' seemed to imply that it was fluid, or fabriclike, when it was really more like...   
A crack.   
It was tenuous, and looked like it was trying to close itself even before their very eyes-- but that was definitely what it was.

" _Shit_ ," Xander said, dragging his hands backwards through his hair.

"You said it," Desmon said, getting to her feet but not trying to jump into the air just yet. "Now say it about five more times, and that's how I feel."

A few moments followed wherein everyone did full-body inventories; nobody seemed to be seriously hurt. The digimon felt a little off their game, but nothing that couldn't be attributed to the 'just got impaled and forcibly de-digivolved' funk.

The city square stayed quiet, but they began to check on each other and their digimon partners.

It was only Natalie who didn't say anything. She stood, her eyes on the ground underneath the strange crack in the air. Everyone was, understandably, steering clear of it. Air, after all, was not meant to be cracked.

"Well, nice job, team," Sam said flatly, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. "Let's take the rest of the day off and reconvene tomorrow for a performance review and crumpets."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Gelermon said, feeling her body protest as she got up.

"Hold on," Natalie said, the first words she had said to anyone but Raumon. Her eyes were on the crack in front of them. Her posture was board-stiff.

"What's up, Nat--alie," Ryan said, appending the later two-thirds of her name hastily.

All eyes were on her, digimon and human alike, and she was acutely aware of it.

"We can't just sit around waiting for this to happen again," she said slowly, choosing every word carefully. Raumon looked up at her meaningfully, immediately catching on.

"What are you trying to imply?" Peter said, raising an eyebrow while Banmon peered over his shoulder.

"Lemme guess," Lily said. "You think we need to follow squirrel boy, right?"

Natalie didn't immediately answer, and that spoke plenty.

"Hold up, back up, two seconds," Jen said, holding her hands up. "Why?"

"Because we have the D-Rives," Sam said, looking down at his own. Natalie looked over at him in surprise, the grateful expression of _oh thank god you're in the same boat_. "They've got something to do with this. They have to, considering what just happened. If anything's going to have a chance at fixing this shit," he held up the little device, turning it over in his hand.

There was a moment of silence, and Natalie took a deep breath.

"Look. I don't know-- none of you have to think this is a good idea, because I'm _pretty_ sure this is the worst idea I've ever had? But I've been looking at that crack, and I-- I don't know. We may not get another chance. I think I--" she paused, and looked at Raumon, who nodded decisively. " _We_ need to follow him. The rest of you are free not to."

Hoo boy, was the silence that followed this statement a heavy one as eight other people stared at her.

Lily, again, cut straight to the point.   
"I'm in," she said. "Assuming Brockmon is, I mean," she said, looking to her partner.

"We've been prepared for this for some time," the badger said.

"Yeah, see? We're in."

Another pause followed, this one shorter than the last.

"I must be going fucking crazy," Xander said, "because I think you've got a point."

"You've thought about it too, you liar," Desmon said, piping up. "You said if you had the chance you'd go strangle Ratamon in his own home."   
Xander chose to pretend he didn't hear that.

"What the fuck else have I got to do with my day, I guess," Sam said, scratching the back of his neck. He was clearly nervous, but he couldn't not be sarcastic. Gelermon looked meaningfully up at him, then glanced around at the others.

"Whatever he does, I do," she said.

Meghan looked to Oremon for confirmation; the goat said nothing, merely nodded once, and Meghan heaved a heavy sigh. She picked herself up, clenching one fist determinedly. "We'll go, too, then," she said, sounding more confident than she felt.

"I think... we should go, too," Banmon said quietly, hovering over Peter's shoulder still. Peter nodded once; he needed no further statement.

Truth be told, all of them had thought abut this before; they had just... never really thought it would be something they would have to act on.   
But really... they'd all made their choices a long time ago.

A quick exchange of hushed words went around between Ryan, Eli, Jen, and their respective partners. They nodded at each ther, and it was Ryan who acted as delegate, turning to Natalie.

"We'll--" he said, but she immediately shook her head.

"No," she said. "You have to stay here."

Ryan and especially Shitomon looked like she had just told them that she shot their dog.

"We deserve to be a part of this too," Shitomon said, indignance and frustration mixing in equal measure in her voice.

"Yeah, I mean, it's only the only reason we came here in the first place," Hulimon said, arms akimbo.

"That's why you have to stay behind," Raumon said evenly. "Emergent digimon are still going to be coming through. Someone who can actually take care of them, and fight, and digivolve, has to be here." He looked pointedly between angel-rabbit, fox, and red panda.

"I..." Lurumon said, frowning, then closed her eyes. She nodded slowly. "That makes sense."

Shitomon stared at the ground for a few moments. She seemed very conflicted, and her brow furrowed.

"You alright?" Ryan said quietly, and Shitomon closed her eyes and sighed. She opened her eyes again, and she put a determined expression on as she did, clenching one paw into a fist.

"You can count on us," she said.

"There's the duty-bound wacko we know and love," Hulimon said, rubbing at his nose, and then glancing at the crack. "May want to get a move on it, though. Those things don't stay open forever from what I hear. It can be pretty nasty to get caught in it."

Shit, right.

"Hey, I mean, the time dilation thing's already happening again, right?" Desmon said. "We might be back in time for dinner. Who knows."

It was a hastily-made decision, to be sure of it.

But they didn't really have a better one, and that's how twelve hands reached out as one for the shimmering, shining distortion in space in the center of the town square.

With a shimmer, a shift, and a little bit of glitchiness, Natalie, Raumon, Xander, Desmon, Peter, Banmon, Meghan, Oremon, Sam, Gelermon, Lily, and Brockmon vanished, and the crack in space flickered out a few seconds later.

Ryan looked at his D-Rive and noted, with some surprise, that a new option on his D-Rive's menu had appeared, spelled out in English letters. As he pointed this out, Jen and Eli checked their own, and they confirmed it had appeared on their own.

_CONNECT._

 


	25. Episode 25: Albatross

Natalie's eyes snapped open as her entire body jerked as though in response to the sensation of falling. Her lungs burned for air; she took a sharp, deep gasp of a breath, sucking in air like a man who'd only barely been spared from drowning.

Her head was spinning. She felt like every joint in her body had been pulled apart and knocked back into place with a rubber mallet. Sitting up right now was not an option, and even the patches of bright-blue sky peeking through the canopy of the trees were entirely _too_ bright, and she squeezed her eyes shut.   
It only took her about ten seconds to remember that the sky above was supposed to be a dreary blanket of Pacific Northwest grey framed by buildings. Despite every inch of her body insisting that she do anything else, her eyes flew back open and she wrenched herself up into a sitting position.

She looked around frantically, trying to get a bearing on her surroundings-- and more importantly, trying to remember what had just happened.

She remembered reaching out for the weird... shining crack _thing,_ suspended in the air.   
She remembered the sensation of rushing and standing still, stretching out and springing back, hot and cold, too much trying to pass through too small a space.

And she remembered, the last thing before she blacked out, the feeling of Raumon's claw closing around her wrist, and so it was Raumon that she looked for first. She immediately noticed the slow-breathing, familiar-to-the-point-of-unmistakability mass of black feathers and purple claws immediately next to her. With that secure, she allowed herself to look around more properly.

Wherever this was, it was a far cry from the city square.

She found herself and Raumon positioned at the bottom of a gentle hill; the ground was covered in scrubby grass and hard dirt. She was in some kind of forest; ancient-looking trees stood tall and gnarled all around them, their trunks twisting together and diverging in strange configurations before they opened their arms to the sky. Long-since felled trunks lay crisscrossing the ground, covered in a strangely blueish moss.

Admittedly, she was no botanist, but the plants looked slightly _off_ from anything she had ever seen.

Everything was spookily still and eerily quiet, without so much as a breeze to shake the branches overhead. If she strained her ears, she could _almost_ hear running water in the distance, but that was it.   
She hesitantly overturned a palm-sized rock that was embedded in the soft earth near where she was sitting. Where she might have expected any number of crawling things to have been taking shelter underneath it... nothing.   
She supposed she'd count that as a net positive, because she had no idea how long she and Raumon had been laying here, but it wasn't exactly comforting either way.

She sat there for a few long minutes, not moving, just looking around at the strange, slightly alien forest around her. She felt kind of numb-- both physically, like her entire body had gone to sleep and was now experiencing the first vestiges of pins and needles, but also emotionally, like she had registered but not truly _processed_ what had just happened.

When Raumon shifted and began to move a few minutes later -- though for how it felt, it may have been hours -- it gave Natalie a bit of a start.

"We made it through in one piece, then," Raumon said as he pushed himself to a sitting position in a much more dignified, careful way than Natalie had managed. His voice sounded a little croaky.

When Natalie opened her mouth to respond, she realized that she, was, too. She sounded like she had just finished walking through a desert when she said, "guess so."   
The awkward lump in her throat didn't help.

She knew what they had just done, of course. It was what she had decided to do-- not just now, but something she had thought about and had decided on and known would be her choice, if it came to it, for weeks. The decision to act on it had been a snap one, but the knowledge that it was the right thing to do if the opportunity presented itself wasn't a new revelation.   
But when Raumon said those words -- _we made it through in one piece_ \-- it seemed to sink in that she _had_ acted on it, and that the others had followed her lead, and she went kind of numb all over again. She stared at a fallen tree trunk immediately in front of her.

The plague-doctor bird glanced over at her, his expression sympathetic. He looked up through the branches to the sky, and deliberated for a moment before he spoke. "Any idea where the others are?"

This simple question snapped Natalie back to the present, and she blinked.

"Haven't the damndest. I just came-to, myself," she said, shaking her head. "Didn't really want to start yelling to see if they were nearby, you know?"

Raumon tapped his beak in agreement, and Natalie smiled a little despite herself.   
She emptied her pockets and laid their contents out on the ground before them; there wasn't much. She had her D-Rive, her phone, her wallet, her keys, and some pocket lint. She hadn't really been planning on a cross-dimensional trip today, so she felt she could be excused for being a little unprepared.

She picked up her phone first, getting the distinct feeling that it wasn't going to do her a lot of good. Unlocking it proved that she was, in fact, completely right. The clock was freaking the fuck out, she appeared to have sixteen bars of signal, and the battery percentage read 20AQ40% as it overflowed off the side of the screen.

At least she wouldn't have to worry about not having a charger on-hand.

Raumon tried to be subtle, but it was obvious that he was peering over at her, watching intently; she didn't particularly mind, and tilted the screen for his benefit.

She pocketed her phone, keys, and wallet, turning instead to the D-Rive. She turned the little black and purple device over in her hand, inspecting it for she-didn't-know-what, before she pressed the button to turn the screen on.

The D-Rive, unlike her phone, was in perfect working order.   
More than that, actually. When she had used it before -- when she had used it in the human world, she reminded herself with a kind of sickly drop in her stomach -- all of the menu options that weren't the radar brought up almost entirely blank screens. Now, they all sprang to life with completely unreadable information that she was sure Sam would get a (very frustrated) kick out of.

Most notable was that that new option at the bottom.   
_CONNECT,_ it read, in plain Roman letters.

Natalie and Raumon both looked at it, and exchanged what could only be described as Looks, with a capital L.

"Should I see what it does?" Natalie said apprehensively.

 

"Well," Raumon said, thinking for a moment. "Aside from breaking our eardrums, have the D-Rives ever done anything spectacularly bad of their own accord?"

"Do we really want to risk it making that noise right now?"

"... you know what? Fair."

Whatever this mysterious new option was, she didn't get the chance to really inspect it to its fullest. A sound -- the first sound that something other than them had made -- hit their ears. It was only the rustling of leaves and the snapping of a couple twigs behind them, but it felt loud as a gunshot in that moment.   
She looked over her shoulder and swore that for a second, she saw a pair of blue eyes staring out at them from the underbrush, only to vanish in the time it took to blink. The sound of rustling continued, getting further away; whatever it was, it was running away.

She scrambled to her feet, turning around, and she realized she had no goddamn idea what she was supposed to do in a situation like this. Was it running because it was scared? Was it trying to get backup?   
Was she overthinking this?   
"Whatever you are, we mean no harm," she said, a little bit louder than her normal speaking voice but not quite yelling. "We're just-- lost, I guess is the best way to describe it..." she tried, glancing to Raumon for backup, but she realized that he hadn't stood up.

The little plague doctor raven was still sitting, craning to look over his shoulder at where the flashes of blue had been.

"Raumon?" she said, blinking slowly, and he shook his head as though waking up from a trance.

"Sorry, sorry," he said hastily. "Should we look for the others?"

 

***

They did just that. The two of them looked around for the better part of an hour, trying not to wander _too_ far from their starting point just in case. No matter how much they looked, there was no sign of anyone. They did see _some_ digimon at least-- small bird-like digimon flying overhead, quick glances of digimon that resembled animate plants here and there.

Nothing really seemed to take note of them, though, and they did their best to steer clear and avoid disturbing anything. It was at least _something_ , some indication that they hadn't accidentally ended up somewhere horrifically wrong.

It was bothering Natalie that, when she looked at her D-Rive-- despite everything else on the little gizmo flaring to life -- none of the digimon they saw were showing up on its radar. The only thing it picked up was the purple dot at its center, and even _that_ was a little off. She seemed to remember its center-point being shaped like an approximation of Raumon's head, but it was a simple violet circle, and the rest of the radar was...   
Well, she saw what looked like a rough topographic map of the area, and frankly, she was getting a good enough look at _that_ already.

Needless to say, they were not having much luck. They hadn't seen hide nor hair of any of their companions.

Natalie kept her eyes on her D-Rive, using it as a map to find their way back to where they had started. They didn't want to wander too far, just in case they were headed in the totally wrong direction, but they didn't exactly know where else to go.

So imagine her surprise when--

" _Hey, does this thing do what I think it does?_ "

Sam's voice came out of the little device, just as clear as if he were standing immediately next to her.   
Raumon practically jumped into the air, while Natalie fumbled with the little device, almost dropping it.

"What the--?" she blurted, holding her D-Rive like it was a bomb.

" _Natalie?_ " Sam's voice came right back, sounding _intensely_ vindicated. " _See, I told you._ "

" _Yeah, yeah, so one time out of fifty, you doing something with it doesn't make it shatter my eardrums,_ " Gelermon's voice came through the D-Rive.

" _What the fuck is going on?_ " Xander's voice cut in next.

Natalie looked at the D-Rive; much like it did when a digimon had been nearby in their world, it had activated of its own accord. This time, the radar was not open; it was a different screen, one of the ones that Natalie had surmised that Sam would have gotten a kick out of.   
She was, as it turned out, apparently correct.

One by one, the familiar voices of the others chimed in, and when they spoke, a pillar of their D-Rive's colour shot up from the bottom of the screen, rising and falling with their voice, not unlike an equalizer bar.

" _You have no idea how good it is to hear your voices,_ " Meghan said, speaking quickly. " _Though I guess maybe you do?_ "

" _We've been searching for any sign of others for the last hour,_ " Oremon said. " _Meghan was starting to get worried._ "

" _Oh, so were you, you liar,_ " Meghan chided. Oremon snorted

" _We're not dead yet, no,_ " Peter said, " _though not for lack of valiant effort._ "

" _Dial it back, Nietzche,_ " Lily said.

Natalie couldn't deny that a whole lot of tension fell out of her shoulders just at hearing the voices of the others, even if it wasn't quite as relieving as, you know, actually knowing where they were.   
"I didn't know these things had a communication function," she thought out loud, turning the little device over in her hand.

Raumon glanced over his shoulder; he thought he heard something, but he decided that it was likely to just be him mistaking a noise from the D-Rive.

" _I'm taking a wild guess that the D-Rives work a bit better here,_ " Sam said, " _or at least they work a bit_ differently, _at any rate. Not sure what's up with the radar, and I still haven't poked at everything that's changed,_ " he said, and Natalie got the distinct feeling that he hadn't wanted to futz with that ominous new option either, " _but, you know._ "

" _Hey, I'm sure that this is all really fascinating,_ " Xander said, cutting in, " _but more importantly, where the hell are all of you?_ "   
Despite his blunt phrasing, that _was_ a bit more of an immediately relevant issue.

Everyone immediately tried to describe where they were. It sounded as though Lily had ended up in the same forest as Natalie had, though clearly, quite some ways away; but then Peter and Xander both mentioned being near an ocean, whereas Meghan and Sam both believed themselves to be in some sort of mountainous area.

Well, at least it made sense why nobody had been able to find each other.

" _You don't suppose that Ratamon-- or whatever-- did something to split us up?_ " Meghan mused.

" _I don't think he knows we followed him,_ " Lily said. " _If he did know we'd followed him, I think he would've done something, and if he had done something, I don't think we'd be in one piece to wonder about it._ "

... well. That was one half a relief, one half kind of horrifying. It was probably best to focus on the relief half. That was what they had come through to do, after all, and Natalie had -- whether she consciously realized it or not -- worried that her snap decision may have. You know. Screwed them over entirely.

" _So then, we have the element of surprise._ " Oremon was characteristically blunt.

"For now," Raumon said, nodding even though nobody but Natalie could see the gesture.

" _Well, it's not really much of a surprise,_ " Desmon pointed out, " _since we're all separated and have no idea where to go._ "

" _So then we need to try to reconvene before anything else,_ " Peter said. It was obvious, of course, but it still needed to be said.

" _I feel,_ " Xander said, " _like that's going to be easier said than done, considering that it doesn't sound like we're all exactly on the same geographical page._ "

" _Well,_ " Meghan said, " _maybe, like, those of us who are at least_ probably _close-ish to each other should prioritize finding each other first? Then we can worry about all of us meeting up once we're not all total sitting ducks, you know?_ "

"So, that'd be, what," Natalie said, counting off on the fingers on her free hand, "me and Lily, Meghan and Sam, Peter and Xander?"

" _Joy,_ " Xander muttered.

" _Right back at you,_ " Peter said back.

" _Should we get them a get-along shirt?_ " Gelermon said, and was immediately, quite obviously, hushed by Sam.

" _Back on topic,_ " Brockmon cut in. " _I don't think transferring over should have thrown us too far apart, and if that's the case, then I think I know more or less where we are._ " Beat. " _In theory. I'm not terribly familiar with where I am right now._ "

"That's fine," Raumon said, his ear-feathers perking up. "But then where are we?"

" _I_ think _we're in the halo around the old temple barrens,_ " Brockmon said when prompted.

" _If only that meant anything to me,_ " Desmon lamented, and again, it ended in a muffled noise as Xander forcibly hushed her.

" _Around the..._ " Brockmon paused. " _The place where we originally crossed over to the real world,_ " he said diplomatically, " _is a wasteland called the Barrens. Bordering that, there's a region of forested mountains called the Halo around the east, and the Holy Sea to the south._ "

 

"So if you guys at the ocean follow the coast northeast, and the rest of us go southwest until we reach the coast and follow it, we should hopefully come into range of each other, right?" Raumon said, tapping his beak in thought.

" _Right,_ " Brockmon said. " _I'm roughly estimating here, but I don't figure it shouldn't take more than a couple days._ "

" _A couple days, he says,_ " Sam said, sighing. Natalie couldn't deny that she blanched a little bit as well, but... well. What option did they have?

" _We could just go straight into the Barrens and work it out from there,_ " Gelermon said, her voice sardonic. " _Sounds like it'd be faster._ "

" _If you wanted to die, yes,_ " Brockmon said, which. Well.   
That was blunt.

"Well, it's not a great plan, but at least it's _a_ plan," Natalie said, sighing and rubbing the back of her head. "Does anyone object?"

Nobody did, because nobody could think of anything better. They all coordinated the ways they were facing, orienting themselves as best they could. Brockmon assured them that the sun's movement was similar enough to that in the human world that they could go by it, and it was... well, it wasn't a fantastic plan, but it wasn't a fantastic plan that had brought them here, so they were going to go with it.

There was, of course, one big elephant (or dragon-squirrel) in the room that hadn't really gone addressed.

" _What if we run into--?_ " Banmon said, piping up nervously.

A deafening silence followed.

"Fight back by any means necessary, I suppose," Raumon said after a moment. He was still glancing over his shoulder, a little bit distracted.

" _Oughta just wave the D-Rives at him,_ " Xander said. " _Fucker seems to have issue with them._ "

" _Right?_ " Meghan said, and Natalie could practically see her expression through the tone of her voice, nervous but trying to find a silver lining.

" _I'm thinking,_ " Lily said after a moment, " _that we should maybe limit use of this communication function if we can help it._ "

" _How do you figure?_ " Peter said, raising an eyebrow with his voice.

"Because if someone is trying to pass unnoticed or in danger," Natalie said, immediately catching on, "then the last thing they need is someone gabbing away at them. Right?"

" _Got it,_ " Lily confirmed.

" _Fair enough, I guess,_ " Sam said, humming with thought. " _But it's the option under the radar, in case of emergencies. Just open it and press the center button. As far as I can tell there's no way not to drag everyone in, so no private calls._ "

" _Emergencies only, got it,_ " Desmon chirped. " _So anytime I'm bored! Got it._ "

A round of goodbyes went around, of good-lucks and don't-get-killeds. Natalie returned to the menu of her D-Rive, and just like that, the voices of her compatriots went silent.

And the forest around them was eerily silent once more.

"Well," Natalie said, "at least we know everyone's alive. That's better than we were doing fifteen minutes ago."

Raumon, though, didn't immediately response. She was about to turn to look at him, to make sure he was doing okay, but the sound of a snapping branch just behind them practically echoed in the trees.

"It's the same one from earlier," Raumon said immediately, so quickly that Natalie almsost didn't register his words. She whipped her head around and saw a flash of blue and grey, of something about Raumon's size running away.

"I--" Natalie blinked a couple times. "Should we follow it?"

"Considering how many digimon we've met that had a problem with me personally..." Raumon said. He sounded like he was building up to a conclusion that they should run away on the double. Instead, he tugged on Natalie's pant leg, pointing after the little grey (presumably) digimon that was making a break for it. "Come on!"

Natalie couldn't help but smile a little bit at Raumon's attitude, even as she and her partner took off after whatever it was that had been peeking at them. She got the distinct impression that there was more to it than simply wanting to find out why they were being observed, but she held her tongue for the time being.

"Wait!" Raumon called, sidestepping around a tree to avoid smashing straight into it. Though the grey thing had a bit of a head start, it didn't take long for them to catch up; apparently flustered by being pursued, it hadn't been looking where it was going. They saw it cast a look over its shoulder and, with that distraction, tripped over a gnarled tree root as it crested a hill.   
The panicked honk of some kind of waterfowl rang out in the air as the little grey digimon tumbled down the far side of a shallow hill.

"Oh, crap," Natalie said, feeling a pang of guilt. Raumon put on a burst of speed and ran up and over the slope, taking care to avoid the root that had tripped up the digimon who was running away. Natalie, of course, followed closely.

As they descended, they were able to more clearly see the digimon they were pursuing, as it attempted to pull itself out of the patch of wet mud that it had tumbled into. Underneath the muck, it was indeed just about Raumon's size-- and moreover, it, too, was a little bird. It looked like a young swan; its only accessories were the silver choker around its neck and the silver ring around its left leg, and the rest of its body was covered in nothing but silvery-grey feathers. Its beak and legs were a darker grey, and though its eyes were closed, they could extrapolate that they were shiny and blue.

"Are you okay?" Natalie said, reaching out a hand apprehensively but pulling back slightly out of politeness.

The little swan pulled itself up into a sitting position and seemed to realize in short order that it had been caught up with.   
"Uh," the swan said, her voice soft and apprehensive, and she looked between Natalie and Raumon in turn. She paused and glanced to the side with furrowed brow, quite obviously feeling that she had been caught out. "I'm fine," she said after a moment.

"Why were you watching us? Sorry to be blunt," Raumon said, holding out a claw to help pull the swan up to standing. She did not take it, and Raumon half-recoiled his hand, but kept it outstretched. "We just-- that was you the first time, too, right?"

The swan hesitated before she spoke. "You were making a lot of noise," she said, choosing each word carefully. "Usually when something makes that much noise it's someone who's gone feral, and I'd need to call for backup."

Natalie frowned. "I didn't think we were being that loud," she said.

"The screeching noise?" the little swan said, raising an eyebrow, and Natalie and Raumon immediately caught on-- the D-Rives must have been doing their very loud _thing_ before they had woken up. "I'd never heard anything like it, but I still wanted to investigate. You were the only things around, and it had been coming from around there."

"Right," Raumon said, tapping his beak. "That was... well. We didn't realized it carried."

The swan, luckily, didn't ask further about what had made the screeching noise.

"Well, that said, we're not feral and hostile, obviously," Raumon said. He didn't know where this digimon's allegiances lay, and either way, the whole _we just got dropped here from another world_ is a bit of a hard sell (as he knew well), "so hopefully your worries are assuaged."

The little swan nodded, and cautiously, she finally took Raumon's outstretched claw to pull herself out of the mud-- yes, he had been extending his hand the entire time.

"Sorry if it's rude to ask," Natalie said, as she wasn't able to dismiss a thought. "That explains why you came to check on us the first time, but why were you following us this time?"

The little swan looked quite a bit as though she had hoped they wouldn't ask, and she rubbed the back of her head nervously. "It's nothing," she said, looking at Raumon again. "You just look like somebody that I used to know a very long time ago, but I think it's just my eyes playing tricks on me."

It took an enormous force of will for Raumon and Natalie not to exchange glances.

"Oh?" Raumon said, tilting his head. "Sorry, didn't mean to cause you any undue confusion."

Natalie glanced surreptitiously at him; she could tell, without an ounce of doubt, that he was playing dumb. It was in the subtle way his ear-feathers twitched and the way he tapped his beak and shifted his weight.   
She knew for a fact he had the same thought as her, but she decided not to say anything, letting Raumon play diplomat.

"It's fine," the little swan said. "I didn't mean to alarm you. I just wanted to double-check myself, it's been hard to be sure of a lot of things lately."

"Trust me, I know," Raumon said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry we chased you, it's--" he paused, seeming to do a mental backspace so he didn't say anything he shouldn't have. "We just don't have a good track record. It's best to be cautious."

"I understand," the swan said, smiling somberly. "I assume you're just passing through here?"

"You'd be correct," Natalie said.

"I'm sorry that I overheard," the little swan said, "but you're heading for the Holy Sea, yes? I'm sorry if I'm wrong, and I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but--"

"No, no, it's fine," Natalie said quickly, holding up her hands. As far as she could remember they hadn't said anything too damning. "Do you know which direction we should be heading? We're, uh, not from around here."

"I could tell," the little swan said with a gentle smile, and then she pointed in a direction. "About a half-day's walk from here is the river-- if you start now you should get there by nightfall. A couple days' walk from there you'll reach the sea."   
She paused, and noted that both Raumon and Natalie looked a little embarassed that their being out of place was so obvious. "Most digimon who aren't from around here tend to get lost fairly easily. Not that we've had much in the way of travelers lately, but, you know."

"Well," Natalie said, "thank you. Sorry for any trouble we may have been."

"It's alright," the swan said, bowing her head. She paused. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your names."

"I'm Raumon," Raumon said, pointing to himself. "And this is--" he hesitated, debating whether or not to try and append a -mon to the end of his partner's name. "Natalie," he said, deciding it would sound stupid if he tried.

"Well, I hope your travels treat you well, Raumon, Natalie," the swan said, taking it in stride, and she stretched out her wings. She flapped them a couple times to dislodge any dirt or water that clung to them, and she picked into the air with a little bit of effort.

"Wait!" Natalie said, blinking. "What's your name? If you're going to ask ours, we'd like to know yours, after all."

The young swan, as she alighted on a thick and gnarled tree branch, looked over her shoulder and smiled. "I'm Cygnetmon," she said, and she took off over the canopy of the trees.

"Cygnetmon," Raumon repeated slowly as she almost immediately passed out of sight.

"You know her?" Natalie said quietly, looking over at her partner. It was a question only in the formal sense; the way he had looked when she had said she had recognized him was a dead giveaway. He didn't have much of a poker face, for a creature with a literal magic mask for a face.

Raumon paused before he answered. "I mean, let's be realistic," he said, gesturing with one claw. "What are the odds that not only have we appeared in a forest I recognize, but also met the one of countless Cygnetmon that happens to know me, more than fifteen years after the fact?"

"... so that's a yes?" Natalie prompted, unable to stop herself.

"Knowing our luck," Raumon agreed after a moment, nodding. "Should we try to find that river?"

 

***

Cygnetmon came to her destination, making a not-so-delicate landing in the pond near her home, and she glanced around. There were a scattered few others of her kind and similar species of digimon. There were fewer than there used to be, but that just meant fewer witnesses to the fact that she hit the water with maybe less grace than she'd prefer. Her mind was elsewhere, after all.

"So it was him, wasn't it?"

And her mind was brought crashing back to the present by a voice too-obviously speaking to her.

Cygnetmon sighed internally, closing her eyes. She schooled her face into a neutral expression as she glanced to the side. "No. It was another. There's probably a hundred-thousand Raumon in the world, you know."

Paddling over to her was Gosmon; where Cygnetmon was a young swan, Gosmon resembled a young goose, his feathers varying shades of white, silver, and a dark purplish grey. His wings were tipped in big blunt grey claws, and his bright-green eyes were clever and narrow.

" _I_ think it must have been," Gosmon said, ignoring almost all of what she had said. "You said he had a human with him. I bet it was him."

"I double checked, like you suggested I do, and I was mistaken," Cygnetmon said firmly.

Gosmon frowned, tilting his head at her. "I think," he didn't seem to notice that Cygnetmon had negative interest in what he thought, "that you're just being nostalgic, and you don't want to take an opportunity when it shows up right on your doorstep. It's been fifteen years."

Cygnetmon took a moment, quirking an eyebrow at Gosmon. "It's been fifteen years, so by your own logic, you should stop insisting that every black bird is him."

"But it's a Raumon this time, so I think I'm a little justified here," Gosmon insisted. "You can tell me to get over it all you like, but look around, Cygnetmon." He gestured with one claw at the few stragglers that still hung around this ever-shrinking pond. "The forest is dying. Our entire _world_ is dying. It's getting worse. In a year, the Halo will be indistinguishable from the barrens." He gestured widely at their surroundings, and then pointed an accustator claw at Cygnetmon. "And you know as well as I do that he's to blame for it."

Cygnetmon averted her eyes, sighing. "If that was what you were concerned about," she said, "then why didn't you go when that group tried to make it into the temple? You talked a big game about being first in line if you ever had the chance."

"Bet you anything they're dead, and I'm no use to any cause dead," Gosmon said, quickly enough that Cygnetmon got the impression he had pre-prepared that answer.

Cygnetmon paused, and began to paddle away from Gosmon. "You can't fool me," she said over her shoulder. "You and I know perfectly well that it's not anything to do with any _cause_ that you're still hung up."

Gosmon made a sort of annoyed noise and puffed up his feathers. "Believe what you want," he said flippantly, tossing his head and turning away, himself.

The little swan sighed, looking to the sky.

 

 

***

Without any little swans sneaking peeks at them, Natalie and Raumon had an afternoon almost entirely bereft of other sapient life. As they did when they had been wandering to find others, they occasinally saw glimpses of digimon in the distance -- some quite large and hard to miss as they trudged long, others almost impossible to find at all, but whether they were avoiding or being avoided, it didn't matter. Either way, they kept on their guards, but everyone and everything seemed to want as little to do with anything around them as possible.

Natalie was... well. From what little they had heard from the few sources they had, her mental image of the digital world hadn't been an ancient but almost deathly-still forest, overgrown with plant life and bereft of things that moved and breathed and talked.

She had maybe expected fighting monsters and a war-torn landscape, but instead she just got the feeling with every step that she was disturbing ground that had laid untouched for weeks, months-- even years.

She couldn't tell if it was true, but it certainly felt that way.

She had plenty of time to think and talk with Raumon. Raumon was more than willing to lead the way and stay alert, so she was able to go on a form of autopilot, following her feet and her partner while her mind wandered.

One thought prevailed all afternoon. She hoped, very badly, that she hadn't made a massive mistake.

The sun had just begun to dip below the horizon -- Natalie assumed. They couldn't actually _see_ the horizon beyond the thick trees and rolling hills, but they could see the sky overhead begin to fade through dusty oranges, reds, and pinks of sunset.   
Raumon was just saying that they might have to stop and resume their push for the river tomorrow, as he didn't particularly want to try to navigate in the dark -- it was dark enough on the ground just thanks to the canopy above them. However, no sooner than he said that, they reached the top of a hill and saw before them... well.

They could only assume it was the river; it was the only body of water they had encountered that was more than ten feet across. It stretched perhaps a hundred fifty feet -- it was tiny compared to, say, the Harper River back home, but still.

"... I'm still saying we should stop for the night," Raumon said, putting his hands on his hips.

"You're not going to get an argument from me."

"Do you think we should stop up here," Raumon said, "for the vantage point, or--?"

"Ah, yes," Natalie said, gesturing around with one hand at how much they could actually see around them. It... wasn't much. Any advantage they would gain from the altitute was undone by the trees.

"Point taken," Raumon said, without her even elaborating.

They found a clear-enough space at the bottom of the hill a short ways from the bank of the river, and while they could hardly be said to _make camp_ , they situated themselves. Natalie cleared off a fallen log and rested her back against it, and Raumon took a seat next to her.   
After all, if they could have laid unconscious on the ground for who-knew-how-long without anything bad happening to them...   
Not like they really had any choice.

"You know what's weird," Natalie said, pulling her knees close to her chest as she looked out towards the water.

"A great number of things," Raumon said with a smile, but he paused. "What?"

"I don't feel hungry, even though I haven't eaten since--"   
Well, since before they had left the real world, suffice to say. That long, and as much walking as they had done... she was tired, to be sure; exhausted, definitely. Hungry, though? Not at all. Not even the 'body has gone into starvation mode because I've ignored my hunger until now' kind of lack, either; she hadn't felt a single pang, not a single moment of wishing she had food-- or even water.

Raumon tilted his head. "I-- hm." He scratched at the dirt next to him, pondering. "Maybe-- you know how we, as in digimon, don't have to eat?"

"Right."

"Maybe something got rearranged when we came through," Raumon said, gesturing with one hand.

"Maybe," Natalie said, turning her eyes up to the sky with a sigh. "I can't even imagine how weird this is for you."

"You're the one transported to a completely new world, realizing you may not need food or drink anymore, and you're concerned it's weird for me?" Raumon said wryly.

"I'm not the one who's going to be running into possibly-familiar faces," Natalie pointed out, and Raumon shrugged in a _fair enough_ kind of way.

 

***

Gosmon hated flying, but when he had noticed that Cygnetmon had been nowhere to be found... Well, come on. _He_ wasn't about to waste a chance when he got one, and if he had to take advantage of Cygnetmon's sentimentality to do it, so be it.

Admittedly, he didn't have _much_ of a plan, but he'd figure it out as he went.

He flapped silently in the darkening sky. He had had to take a bit of a detour so that Cygnetmon wouldn't know she was being followed, but he guessed that she was heading for the river, which meant that Raumon was probably there as well.   
That lying, conniving rat-bastard Raumon, who'd damned all of them and, more importantly, had made a damn fool of--

Gosmon was given quite a start when his internal monologue was interrupted.

 _If you want to stand a chance, you will need more pow̴e̴r̢, y̴o̶u͝ k͢n̵o͘w.̵_   
Gosmon glanced to either side of him, shocked. The voice had felt like a whisper, but it was clear as could be, as if spoken directly into his ear.

It should go without saying that there was nobody on either side of him, nor above him; if there was anyone in the trees or forest floor below, he had the sneaking suspicion that it hadn't been them who'd spoken.

 _If you want to fight him, you will not be enough as̛ ̵you a̸r͢e,_ the voice continued, a silken whisper that slid into his ears. No, not into his ear-- into his mind directly. It was an unfamiliar voice, hissing and quiet, almost staticky, sounding as though something about it wasn't quite right.

Some higher part of him realized something was wrong, but the part of him that was laser-focused on his self-given mission flared to life, as though a switch was thrown.

_I ̨c͠a͢n g̷iv͘e t̸h̕at͟ ̧to yo̷u._

 

***

Natalie found it hard to relax. She instinctively fiddled with her phone, but -- no surprises -- despite the maxed-out bars that her phone displayed, she didn't actually have any signal. The battery didn't seem to be draining, though, so at least she had the salvation of endless Solitaire to occupy her mind.

She didn't suppose her carrier worked cross-dimensionally.

She looked up at the sky, and as it darkened, it was... weird.   
She'd lived in the city her entire life, and though she'd been out in the middle of nowhere to see the stars in all their glory, the sky of the digital world was something else. The fact that there was absolutely no light pollution was only the first part of it.

Two moons hung in the sky-- one looking not dissimilar to the one she was familiar with, albeit either much bigger or much closer; a much smaller red moon hung close to it, apparently orbiting the larger of the two. The stars around them were painted in clusters, and their colours were distinct; one patch to the south was red and purple, while a section overhead was purple, blue, and white, while the spaces between the clusters of stars was inky-black and empty.   
Altogether, it added up to a very alien feeling sky.

"Natalie, look," Raumon said, breaking her out of her reverie. "Something's coming."   
Natalie followed where Raumon was pointing with one lavender claw, and saw, silhouetted against the stars, a dark shape flying. Instinctively, she reached for her D-Rive, but it didn't take long for both of them to realize what was coming over the hill.

It was Cygnetmon, flapping hard, looking quite tired, and as she saw them on the ground... even from their low vantage point and the low light, it was easy to see the look of relief on her face as she began to descend.

"I'm-- glad," Cygnetmon huffed, her flight faltering somewhat as she approached, "that you-- made it-- to the river."

And then she fell out of the sky like a stone.

Natalie rushed forward, stumbling to her feet the moment she realized what was going on, and she only narrowly caught the little swan, but _narrowly caught_ still means _caught_.

"Are you alright?" Raumon said as Natalie, not knowing what else to do, brought Cygnetmon the ten feet back to where she and Raumon had been sitting. He looked more than curious-- like he was almost relieved, in a strange way.   
She could imagine why.

"I'm fine," Cygnetmon said, still catching her breath. "Just-- a bit tired. I'm-- glad I was able to catch up to you."

It took a few minutes for Cygnetmon to gather herself. Natalie almost said something about wishing that she had some kind of food to offer the poor, obviously tired little digimon, but she remembered that that wasn't really a relevant issue.

Still.

"Why'd you go to the all the effort of following us again?" Raumon said once she had recomposed herself. "Not to be rude, but it seems like you've put quite a lot of effort into it at this point."

The little swan smiled just for a split second, and then looked at the ground, lacing her fingers together in front of her. She was sitting opposite the two, her back facing the river. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a nuisance."

"Not at all," Natalie said, handwaving the very idea away.

Cygnetmon sighed, still looking at the ground. She twiddled her thumbs, thinking very hard about how to put what she wanted to say. "Can I tell you a story?" she said after a few seconds.

Raumon and Natalie looked to each other. "Go ahead," Raumon said, making a _floor is yours_ motion.

Cygnetmon took a deep breath.

"I don't remember exactly how long ago it was-- it was a few years before all of this started. This forest used to be full of digimon. I lived in a... well, I don't know if you'd call it a village or a colony or whatever else. It was a big group of bird digimon of all kinds."   
She spread her wings out to emphasize her point, as though she were gesturing at a large group that didn't exist now.

"One day, not long before I hatched from my egg, a strange digi-egg appeared. Nobody knowed what to do with it, so they took care of it. Most baby and in-training digimon are fairly similar, so I don't think anyone thought much of it." She scratched the side of her head. "But when he grew up to rookie level... well..." she looked to Raumon and paused. "I won't mince words-- he was a Raumon."

"I imagine that's why you felt you knew me," Raumon said, choosing his words carefully.

"Well..." Cygnetmon frowned. "A lot of the others were very antagonistic to him because he was so different from the rest of us. You know how it goes."

"Children are cruel," Natalie said, "regardless of species, I guess."

Cygnetmon smiled and nodded. "Right. I made friends with him, and I... caught a lot of flak for it." Her smile turned joyless as she cast her eyes to the ground. "I think it always bothered him a lot. Both the way they treated him and the fact that I got treated poorly because I associated with him. There was one digimon, a Gosmon, who was kind of the ringleader of all of us. I don't know if he _hated_ Raumon, per say, but he certainly led a lot of the antagonism. I always got the impression that he was after me, but honestly, it was probably just because he didn't like Raumon."

The little swan paused. Raumon and Natalie were both listening intently, not wanting to interrupt.

"I suppose I'll cut out a lot of the unnecessary details. Raumon decided to leave one day. I don't know if he was sick of being mistreated, or if he wanted to find where he was 'supposed' to be, or what, but he said he had to leave." She frowned. "... He told me he'd come back, and then... I don't think I ever saw him again. Not really."

She cut herself off, and took a moment to recompose herself.

"Gosmon crowed a lot about how he, specifically, had driven Raumon out. That he was just going to be bad luck, that he was a Virus type, that we were lucky to have been rid of him. None of the older digimon seemed to want to do anything to discourage him, so they just kind of let him go on."

Cygnetmon looked up to the sky, still twiddling her thumbs. "But one day, Raumon came back." Her audience members were about to ask how she had never seen him again if that was the case, but they thought it rude to ask, and she elaborated of her own accord.

"But he was... in a much higher form. He said he had gotten power from... something. I don't know if he was an ultimate or a mega-- he was stronger than any of us." She paused, and trailed off.   
She let the details go unstated.   
They... filled the details in, by the way her voice went kind of tight, and the way she talked about her de facto flock in the past tense.

"... the last I heard, he was one of the digimon that had escaped to another world," she finished. "Carrying a part of some... _thing_. The reason that the digital world stopped..." she trailed off, then regathered herself. "That's... why I was wondering if you were someone I knew. That's all."

Raumon looked at the ground.   
"Would it make it better or worse if I was the same Raumon," he wondered out loud, speaking to himself more than to anyone else. He closed his eyes and Natalie glanced nervously his way, her brow knitted with worry.

"I think it'd be better," Cygnetmon said, averting her eyes. "I miss the digimon he used to be a great deal."

Raumon felt something heavy in his chest.

And then something blotted out the moon.

"I knew," a masculine voice keened, "that you'd lead me _right to him._ "

"Shit!" Natalie hissed, snapping her attention up.

Coming over the trees was a flying digimon-- this one far, far larger than Cygnetmon had been. He was a bird of great stature, with stark white feathers practically shining in the moonlight. Darker purple and dark-indigo accented his limbs, wing-feathers, and long, elegant neck. A metal mask covered the top half of hs face, while a razor-sharp black beak all but glinted dramatically.

He did not fly elegantly; he practically dive-bombed as he crested the hill, landing with great aplomb a short distance away, kicking up dirt and moss as he did. He rose up to its full stature, nearly fifteen feet, and spread his wings wide.

"I'm so glad you found fit to go find the _traitor_ ," he said, pointing one sharp claw at Cygnetmon. "I don't suppose you've had a sudden change of heart, but that's alright for now."

"Oh, no-- oh no, oh no," Cygnetmon said quietly, furrowing her brow, but Raumon was already getting to his feet and beginning to glow.

"Raumon, drive evolve to... Doctorimon!"

The large bird digimon reared his head back, squinting his bright-green eyes in disdain. " _It was right,_ " he hissed to himself, glaring. Doctorimon did nothing, merely stand between his partner and Cygnetmon, and the strange bird, holding his staff out like a barrier.

"Gosmon!" Cygnetmon cried, standing up. "I know that's you! What are you doing?"

"Mind yourself; it's Albamon now," the bird said, gesturing grandly at himself. "Can't you tell?"

"What did you _do_!?" Cygnetmon demanded, tears welling in her big blue eyes. "How did you digivolve?"

"Nevermind that," Albamon said, tossing his head. For a split second, his body distorted and glitched, and Doctorimon and Natalie alike got a distinct feeling they knew. "I needed power to fight him. I got it. That's what matters."

"Stand back," Doctorimon warned quietly, and Cygnetmon rushed to Natalie's side, not ripping her eyes away, as Doctorimon leapt forward. "Black Bloom!" he cried, slashing his black rose through the air and releasing a rain of razor-sharp petals.

"Razor Down!" Albamon keened, and with the sound of sharpening metal, his feathers hardened visibly until they resembled metal. The petals bounced off of him with a clanging noise as Albamon rushed forward, slashing out at Doctorimon with the edges of his now-razor-sharp wings.

"Face of Judgement!" Doctorimon yelled, his staff releasing a stream of black flames at the giant bird.

Again, Albamon, wasted no time. "Hurricane Wings!" he yelled, and as the metallic sheen faded from his feathers, a misty aura surrounded his wings. This aura shot as wing-shape blasts of water into the black flames, evaporating them effortlessly and flying straight on to smash into Doctorimon, knocking him backwards like a ragdoll.

"Shit," Natalie hissed, pulling her D-Rive out.

"You little _shit_ ," Albamon muttered, as he closed the distance beween himself and Doctorimon in the blink of an eye. "How _dare_ you show your face around here-- oh, wait, you don't show your face, you wear that _freaky fucking mask_ ," he said, grabbing Doctorimon by the face and hoisting him up while he was still dazed.

"Swan Dive!"   
Cygnetmon rushed in propelled by a summoned jet of water, almost knocking Natalie backwards with the force of how quickly she ran forward. The water growing into a veil that surrounded her, she smashed her entire body into Albamon's leg.

Albamon dropped Doctorimon with a growl, turning to look at the little swan.

"And you," he muttered, glaring down at her. "Always defending him. See what that got us!? A rotting _fucking_ world!"

"You--" Cygnetmon said, trying to puff herself up to look tougher. "You accepted power from it! That's why you digivolved! You're no better than him, and at least he was _kind_!"

Albamon's pupils constricted in fury.

"Face of Judgment!" Doctorimon yelled as he leapt forward, firing a black stream of flames directly into Albamon's stomach. The giant bird leapt backwards to avoid the attack, and his beak was engulfed by an aura of white energy.

"Beak Javelin!"

Doctorimon braced himself.

He wasn't aiming it at Doctorimon.

"Cygnetmon!" Natalie cried, reaching out a hand ineffectually as Albamon fired the energy like a spear and it struck true-- straight through the little swan's chest.

Dark-crimson blood stained Cygnetmon's silver feathers, spreading out like the world's most horrible rose in bloom. The attack had only barely shy of run her through, and she stumbled backwards, her eyes wide as her body began to shift and distort just-so.

Albamon flapped as he stayed in the air, observing coldly.

Doctorimon did... the exact opposite. He seemed to all but forget that the giant bird was there at all.

"Face of Judgment!" he practically screamed, the noise tearing its way out of his throat, as he turned the mourning face of his staff to face Cygnetmon. The white flames licked over her, and it seemed for a moment as though the wound was starting to knit itself back together.   
And then it stopped, and the wound began to re-open.

Natalie felt just about ready to throw up.

"Face of Judgment! Face of Judgment!"   
Stream after stream of white flames washed over Cygnetmon's body, and each time, they began to heal her, only for it to undo itself a moment later. Albamon watched, disdain in his eyes, but he seemed to have something he wanted to say.

Doctorimon dropped his staff, and it tumbled as it rolled away. He picked the little swan into his arms as he knelt.

"No, hold on," he said, babbling. "We can-- I don't know how but we can fix this. I'll figure out a way. I just need to--"

"It's okay," she said, even though she knew, and he knew, and they all knew, that it wasn't anywhere close to okay. She reached up and placed a feathery wing-hand on the side of Doctorimon's face. "It was nice to see you again."

In a flash, Cygnetmon exploded into motes of light. The light didn't organize itself into a beam, this time; it scattered, falling to the ground like glowing embers. Cygnetmon's silver choker and the ring around her leg lingered for a split second, but they, too, dropped to the ground and exploded into light, leaving the dark blood on Doctorimon's sleeves as her only memento.

Doctorimon made no sound, only dropped his head. Natalie stood back, clutching her chest. They had only known the little swan for so short a time, but...

And then Albamon had to open his big goddamn beak.

"One out of a hundred million," Albamon sneered, and the bastard was _honest to god slow clapping_. "You pretend to weep for _one_ , when you've killed a hundred by your own hand and a hundred-thousand more by your actions."

Doctorimon did not turn to face Albamon. He made no action whatsoever; he stayed on the ground, his arms fallen limp to his sides. Natalie looked between him and the ultimate-level. She worried that he wasn't going to move-- that he was going to stay facing away while Albamon got a free shot on him.

"You have nothing to say for yourself?" Albamon said, mockery in his voice, as he spread his wings, confirming Natalie's fears. "Fine. I'll still enjoy this."

Albamon landed and began to advance, and Doctorimon did not respond.

"Raumon!" Natalie yelled, tears gathering in her eyes. "Please! _Do something_!"

Doctorimon lifted his head, and made a sound-- the kind of sound that predates words, a noise both hollow and full to bursting of sorrow, of grief, of the reminiscence of something lost.

And from the tips of his blood-stained sleeves, a purple glow began to creep, and Natalie felt a stone drop into her stomach. No-- not now, not here--   
Images of IlDoctorimon filled her mind, of her partner and friend rampaging, fueled by his grief, doing who could know how much damage, getting who knew how much attention--

And then the image of Cygnetmon covered in her own blood, dying with not enough time to say any kind of real goodbye. She thought of Raumon in the same position-- and she thought of how Raumon must feel in this moment, and she felt a pang of something horrible and empty.

Natalie clutched her D-Rive to her chest as it began to glow, feeling a kind of empty, dry sob wrack her.

That wasn't what she had meant when she said do something, but... they didn't have a choice.

The glitchy squeal started up from her D-Rive, vibrating through her very being, and Natalie steeled herself, squeezing her eyes shut.

But then, with a sound like an old TV turning off, the screeching died-- but the black and purple kept creeping over Doctorimon's body, the purple staying in clean circuit-lines.

 

"Doctorimon, conduction evolve to...!"

What?

The swirling orb of purple and black stayed intact; it did not shear, it did not glitch, it did not distort. It grew in size considerably, though it didn't grow quite as large as she was used to.

And Natalie realized immediately, as the sphere of light burst apart to reveal what was inside, that she had seen glimpses of this form, the purplish shape that IlDoctorimon had transformed into for split seconds before he had de-digivolved.

He had the basic form of a harpy, a humanoid torso on animalistic bird legs. His body looked not unlike Raumon's in the broad strokes, simply more humanoid. The same ruff of black feathers around his neck (though perhaps a bit more ruffled), the same charcoal feathers stopping short of his elbows and knees to reveal purple scaly skin, the same bent jet-black tail. A series of red beads were... well, initially, Natalie thought they were a necklace, but it seemed they were embedded in his neck, as was the purple-beaked, sun-bleached bird skull fastened at the front.   
Well, at least it matched the bird skull fastened at the front of his belt, which served to hold up tattered purple pants.

The most striking difference, however, demanded attention. Massive black and purple wings unfurled behind his back, and then faltered-- they were weighed down by massive, heavy chains strewn across and around them, and they twitched helplessly, attempting to spread but unable to do so. Similar chains hit the ground, connected to silver cuffs wrapped around his ankles; this chain, at least, seemed quite slack, looking like the only impediment to movement it would incur would be its weight.

His face was once again a stark-white mask; however, now the mask was completely bereft of eyes, with only flat white and no features to speak of. Honestly, it was at first hard to tell if this or IlDoctorimon's tear-streaked, black-gunk-leaking plague mask was more disconcerting. His beak, sprouting forth from where the mask split up the middle, was jet-black and jagged, with bandages wrapped around it.

But that sense only lasted a moment. Where IlDoctorimon had moved with a ferality and a distinct feeling of wrongness, this new form stood serene and calm. He exuded an aura of self-control. His claws touched the ground and he attempted -- and failed -- to spread his wings. The clinking of metal chains echoed as he announced himself in a slightly raspy, but not wholly unfamiliar, voice.

"Vindecamon!"

 

Albamon growled; if he had lips to curl in contempt, he would have. Vindecamon stood, flexing his claws, getting used to his new form, still not facing Albamon.

"Hurricane Wings!" the white bird called, spreading his wings as they were surrounded by that misty energy again.

Vindecamon moved with shocking speed considering the chains around his legs and his slightly awkward form, whipping around. Even without eyes, the fact that he was death-glaring was more than apparent.   
"Quarantine Control!" he cried. In an instant, his claws were surrounded by a black and purple energy, and he rushed forward, slashing out at Albamon's chest and belly. After his claws connected, he leapt back surprisingly deftly. The glow lingered, plain to see against Albamon's white feathers.

"Is that all you have," Albamon taunted, but his words were cut off by a hiss of pain as the energy suddenly ripped its way out of Albamon's body, flying back at Vindecamon. The black bird absorbed the energy harmlessly, and he fluttered his useless wings, rattling his own chains.   
"Don't _mock me_! Beak Javelin!"   
He once again fired a spear of white energy, and though it hit Vindecamon, it had significantly less effect when it was being used against a fair opponent.

"It would seem to me that there are a great many things," Vindecamon said, "that are only okay when you do them. That doesn't seem fair to me. Raven's Shadow!" he cried, gathering that dark energy in his hands again. This time, instead of lunging into melee range, he threw them like balls, and as they flew, they took on the shapes of ravens. These ephemeral ravens crashed into Albamon and exploded on contact.

Albamon's body glitched out slightly again, but he recomposed himself quickly. "Beak Javelin!" he cried, rushing forward this time as his beak began to glow.   
Vindecamon leapt, catching Albamon's neck on the loose chain that hung between his ankles. Albamon choked as the chain pulled him back and off-balance, and he flailed as he tried to free himself.

"Quarantine Control!" Vindecamon cried again, disentangling himself and leaping towards Albamon again with glowing claws.

When the dark energy ripped its way out of the white bird this time, Albamon went up in a glitchy white glow.   
He did not explode into light-- no, left in his place was a battered and bruised looking rookie digimon, a young goose.

Natalie, if her heart would stop pounding in her ears, would guess that was Gosmon.

Indeed, Gosmon raised his head with hatred in his eyes, gazing up at the form of Vindecamon standing over him.

"I would not stoop to your level," Vindecamon said quietly, his voice somber with all the myriad things that meant. "Leave."

Gosmon looked left and right, and he took off running up the hill. In mere seconds, he was gone. Vindecamon waited a few seconds more, and then the purple light of his de-digivolution reflected off the river a short distance away.

When he returned to being Raumon, he was on hands and knees on the ground, digging his claws into the dirt. There weren't even any blood stains left, and so a couple teardrops marked the soil instead.

Natalie ran to her partner's side, picking him up into her arms and hugging him tightly.

The night was long and sleep only came sparingly, but words came even sparer. It wasn't that they didn't have anything to say; it was that they both knew what the other meant, understanding each other as natural as breathing.

Natalie had known Cygnetmon for less than a day; Raumon had only now had his memory stirred, but they both felt as though something that had always been there was gone. Even if they hadn't known it, they noticed its absence.

 

***

Natalie and Raumon took shifts sleeping, just in case.

It worked fine for Raumon; he knew that sleep wouldn't come to him even if he had wanted it to. While Natalie slept, Raumon carefully put together a very rough and ramshackle little circle of stones that he fished out of the shallow water.   
It was nothing impressive, by any means, but nothing was disturbing them, so he had nothing better to do.

No digimon had even come looking after the fight. He supposed nobody wanted to stick their noses in anyone else's business, these days.

...

Every word that Cygnetmon had said had been like putting a jigsaw puzzle piece in place; it was the same feeling that he had felt when Shitomon had given her side of the story, that same sureness. He could imagine every beat, every word. When Cygnetmon had talked, he had felt the desire to add details to the story well up inside him, only to come up blank.   
And as wrong as being IlDoctorimon had felt, there was a similar sense of fitting into place that accompanied being Vindecamon-- but Vindecamon was unfamiliar. He had never been Vindecamon before, and he was realizing with growing surety that he _had_ been IlDoctorimon.

He still felt something deep within him-- the feeling that IlDoctorimon was still there.   
... god, here he was, acting like his evolutions were different people.

He considered how Cygnetmon must have felt, face to face with IlDoctorimon.   
He thought of how Natalie looked, felt, dreaded every time he turned into IlDoctorimon.

He felt a little bit ill.

He set the final stone in its place and glanced over at Natalie, asleep against the log. He supposed he should try to get some sleep, but his mind was racing, and he'd rather she get more rest if she could.   
He knew Natalie felt the weight of responsibility for this entire situation-- for them being here at all. He would hardly try to downplay that; he understood her worries.

Even if they were completely unsure that they had ever done the right thing, at least there was someone with whom to share the weight of the albatrosses around their necks.


	26. Episode 26: If I Should Fall From Grace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So about that delay, huh...  
> No, sorry! Real life happened(tm). I should have more free time in the next couple months, so hopefully I won't go missing again!

Peter pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, looking down at his D-Rive screen as the 'call' with the others came to a close. It was nice to have some sense of purpose, instead of just walking up this beach in hopes of stumbling upon something, but he couldn't say he was feeling too thrilled. Then again, when did he?

He sighed through his nose, pocketing the little device as he looked around. He and Banmon had woken up here about an hour ago, and they could have looked around all he wanted; there wasn't a whole lot to be seen that they hadn't already seen.   
In one direction: a sea as black as ink, choppy and rough, in from which a thick fog was pouring like a second set of waves. In the other: sand blown back by wind, in between coarse earth and vast swaths of greyish beach-grass. Both ahead and behind them: an endless expanse of coastline, arcing into lagoons and jutting out in outcroppings of soft pale sand.   
Because the idea of walking on pure sand for who-knew-how-long wasn't Peter's idea of a good time, he and Banmon had wandered a short way inland, but they could still see the water.

That was just about all they _could_ see; between sand kicked into the air by gusts of wind and a thick fog rolling unevenly off the sea, almost everything more than maybe a half-mile ahead quickly turned to a desaturated visual slurry lit up by a soft, diffused sun.

"At least," he said, speaking to Banmon, who was floating over his shoulder, "even if we can't see anything, nothing much else can see us."

"That's only so much comfort," she said, looking around cautiously and wringing her scarf-hands.

Peter glanced over at her. He paused and turned slightly so he could smile, howevr subtly. "We'll be fine," he said. "Worse comes to worse, you're more than capable of fighting anything off."

Banmon, if she had blood, would have turned a fantastic shade of pink, but instead the smoke around her face under her hood merely swirled a bit harder and she looked around.

"We're going... east, right?" she said, glancing up and down the beach. "We should be going this way, then," she said, orienting herself with respect to the water and pointing in the correct direction.

Peter blinked, then-- "Right. Brockmon said the sea was to the south. That'd make sense."   
He supposed they might run into Xander, if he and Desmon had been spat out further up the coast.

He kiiiiind of wished they wouldn't encounter each other. Maybe they were further behind, and slow to catch up; maybe they were a ways ahead, and it was Peter and Banmon who wouldn't catch up.

Their relationship hadn't been as -- quite literally -- _violently_ bad as it had initially been, ever since... hell, ever since the last Draugmon fight, really. They had at the very least learned to have a kind of uneasy, _for the good of the group_ truce. Still: he had never been forced to be alone with He of The Negative Amounts of Tact for any extended period of time. Further, he wasn't sure that extended exposure to Desmon, loud and rambunctious as she was, would be the best for Banmon, either.

(... maybe he was just projecting...)

He may have felt bad for thinking it, but that didn't stop him from thinking it.

And so they walked-- or rather, Peter walked and Banmon floated close to hand. They kept to a comfortable silence, making decent time as best they could figure.

Much the same as Natalie and Raumon were discovering, they found that there weren't a whole lot of digimon hanging around. Occasionally a handful of sea-bird-like digimon flapped by overhead, and very-occasionally they saw dark shapes out at sea, but even that may have been a trick of the eyes for all they knew. The fog had been dying down somewhat, but only somewhat, and it only served to reveal how much there _wasn't_ around them. They had passed through some stretches that had been grassier or rockier than others, but unless your idea of 'things of oustanding interest' included 'saw a moderately weird rock', there wasn't much to speak of.

"You don't suppose the entire world is like this, do you?" Peter mused out loud, pausing just momentarily to wipe off his glasses off on his shirt.

Banmon glanced around. "You mean... this empty?" she said, and Peter nodded. She considered it. "I can't say for sure," she said, "but I don't think so. After all, there were enough digimon around to come through and antagonize us." It wasn't quite sarcasm in her voice, as she wasn't the type, but that last bit was said quite flatly. "They had to come from somewhere."

Peter smiled thinly, but didn't interrupt.

"I think there's something about this place," she said slowly, glancing inland. "Brockmon said that we were around the barrens. The way he talked about it, it sounded like... maybe digimon want to avoid it."

Peter followed Banmon's eyeline. "You think it might be because we're close to where digimon are able to cross over?" he said. It wasn't a huge logical leap; according to Brockmon, they had all been strewn relatively close to a common center, and he had picked up bits and pieces from talking with Theo and Martyamon. "I wouldn't particularly care to stick around somewhere unstable, either."

"Yes, but I think it's more than that," Banmon said, tilting her head.

"How do you figure?"

She hesitated. "... I think... the cracks have only been happening for a few months. It wouldn't be this empty if that was all it was. Things happen for a reason."

 

***

Some, of course, had far more efficient methods of travel than having to go by foot, and felt they'd be a fool not to utilize them.

Xander clung to Corymon's back as she flew, almost entirely silently, over the shallowest part of the water. He wasn't sure if it was a blessing or a curse that he had his glasses on and not his contacts in; on one hand, he didn't want to fuck with contacts in another world, but on the other, _his glasses kept fogging up and he wanted to fucking die._   
His hands were starting to go numb, too, though whether that was from flying, the cold salt spray, or holding onto Corymon's mane was a crapshoot.

They had to stay low, else they'd completely lose sight of the ground, and despite Xander's gripings, they had to be on the lookout for Peter and Banmon.   
He wasn't thrilled about it, but fuck it.

Corymon kept her spirits as high as usual. She hummed as she flew, and whenever she noticed that Xander was instinctively trying to keep the rhythm by drumming on her back with his fingers, she matched him, a pseudomusical back-and-forth-- and, occasionally, deliberately tried to throw him off-beat.   
Xander almost found his partner's energy level kind of weird-- she hardly seemed to notice that they had been vomitted into another world. Really, though, he supposed that that kind of devil-may-care cheer was Desmon's way, no matter what form she was in.

(Even the crazy psycho wyrm-bat one.)

"Oi," Xander said, nudging Corymon in the side with the heel of his boot. "D-Rive's got something."

Yes, Xander _had_ been checking his radar periodically, despite its total failure to bring up radar signals on any digimon. It was mostly because he didn't want Corymon to actually end up veering off and flying them into the middle of the goddamn ocean; because of the low visibility, it would've been easy for them to drift further out than they meant to. While its map was rudimentary, it was better than nothing.

But now, for the first time all day, something came up.

Behold: a single, slightly off-white circle, just barely slipping into frame on the far-east side of the map.

Mark the fucking difference.

Jokes aside, Xander had a feeling that he knew what that dot was; it was identical in size and shape to the blue one at the center of his radar. When he thumbed over it, a window popped up, just as it would have for a digimon, except it read only one word:   
_WHITE_

Beat.

"He sure fuckin' is."

"What am I missing?" Corymon said over her shoulder, her ears twitching. "Fill me in."

"Think I've got the hipster wonder on the radar. Looks like he was ahead of us after all. I _think_ this thing's still got the range it did back home so I don't think it'll be too far."

"Roger-dodger. And if it isn't Peter, and instead it's just some giant monster prepared to murder us?"

"Shit, that's a win-win," Xander muttered, sighing through his nose.

Corymon grinned.

 

***

Peter, not looking at his D-Rive, did not see the way it lit up, nor the blue dot that drifted onto its radar.

Banmon, casting a glance over her shoulder, stopped for a moment squinted into the fog. It was hard to tell over the sound of the water, but she thought she heard something behind them. She knew, intellectually, that it was probably just another flock of sea-bird digimon or something, but even with as few digimon as they had seen, she didn't want to take anything for granted.

"Something up?" Peter said, turning around to look where Banmon was looking-- for all the good it did. Visibility was still piss-poor, but even so, he looked out seaward. Sure enough, in a few moments, he heard a voice and saw a dark form slowly, very slowly, coming into focus.

And a very familiar voice, singing very, _very_ off-key as she flew towards them.

" _... bury me at sea, where no murdered ghost can haunt me! If I rock upon the waves, then no corpse can lie upon--!_ Ow! What was that for?"

"Looks like we've found them," Banmon said, glancing at Peter.

"Or rather, like we've been found," Peter said flatly, and Banmon nodded. Even so, he raised a hand, hailing Corymon down. Her form became more distinct as she drew closer and came in for a landing.

 

Peter got the distinct impression that she could have... _alighted_ , let's say, more gracefully than she did. She landed shallowly, dragging her claws into the sand and salt and soft earth, kicking up a massive cloud of it both behind and in front of her.

From somewhere in the cloud:   
"Was that _really necessary_?" followed by the sound of spitting as Xander tried to get the sand out of his mouth.

"Thought we could use a little excitement," Corymon said with a grin, flicking her tail. She seemed totally unperturbed that Peter and Banmon both looked at her without much response. "Been kind of a dull day."

Peter hummed noncomittally, and Banmon didn't anything but hovered close to his shoulder.

Xander dismounted from Corymon's back and dusted himself off, rolling his eyes at her.   
In turn, she Corymon went up in blue light, replaced by the smaller, flapping form of Desmon. Xander visibly braced himself as she moved closer to him, and predictable as anything, landed on his shoulders.

"Your turn to carry me, now," she said, beaming.

"I suppose it would be too easy if you were big enough to carry us both in flight," Peter said. He had been prepared to walk anyway, and he wasn't about to expect that of Corymon, but... eh, it's fun to dream.

"Come on, Xander's heavy enough as it is," Desmon said, beaming as she leaned forward on her partner's head, much to said partner's intense dismay. "And I've been flying all day," she said, a little more seriously, but at least a little apologetic, and she shrugged. "Even I get tired."

"Which is why you demand to be entertained at 3 am," Xander muttered, and he sighed, looking up the coast into the grey blob that everything in the distance faded into. "Well, only 500 more miles of this shit to go."

"Sorry to say we won't be terribly entertaining," Peter said, putting his hands in his pockets as he began to walk forward, maybe a little snider than he needed to be. "Sorry to disappoint."

"It's fine, you're always about as entertaining as watching paint dry, I expected it," Xander said, mimicking both the putting his hands in his pockets and the moving forward, almost as though he wasn't about to be outdone.

 

***

Xander -- who, despite his griping, let Desmon stay on his shoulders -- walked a ways ahead of Peter. What had been a comfortable kind of quiet when it had just been Peter and Banmon together felt stiff and awkward now, even though functionally nothing had changed. Banmon had come to rest around Peter's shoulders like a boa; he didn't mind, as she barely weighed anything, and it let her relax.

Ahead of them, Xander and Desmon chattered back and forth occasionally, antagonistic and acidic but comfortable in that-- and acting almost as though they hadn't joined up with Peter and Banmon at all but for the fact that they weren't flying on their own any more.   
Peter and Xander may as well have been in different worlds entirely for all they interacted. The awkward silence of two people who really don't want to be in each other's company sat on their heads, thicker even than the fog.

Even if he realized it was irrational, Peter found himself half-bitterly wondering why Xander was even here at all, if he and Desmon could just fly ahead. He didn't seem to want to be stuck around Peter, just as much as Peter didn't want to be stuck around him. Was he doing this on purpose? Was he going to hold this against--

"Are you okay?" Banmon asked quietly, a question that jarred Peter out of his minor reverie.

"Mm," Peter said, which wasn't an answer, and Banmon knew it. She didn't say anything, but he saw her glance away to the side, wanting to say something but finding nothing to say. Peter lifted a hand and placed it on top of her head, even though it put his arm at a slightly awkward angle.

Peter glanced around. The fog was as thick as ever, and the sun was starting to sink behind them.   
Sooner or later, they were going to have to figure out what they were going to do when it was too dark to carry on-- which may well have been in the next ten minutes, at this rate.

However, when he looked forward again, he saw something in the mist that gave him pause enough that he actually stopped in his tracks. He he wasn't alone in it; Xander had come to a stop as well a short ways ahead of him, and both Banmon and Desmon both perked up, on high alert. Had they not all responded to it, he might have thought it was his eyes playing tricks on him.

A short ways ahead of them, the ground rose up into a rolling hill. On top of that hill was a shape that-- well, it was only _dark_ compared to the light scattering in the fog. It seemed to be pale, and was the size of a large dog, albeit significantly more slender.

Peter only realized that it was a stark-white fawn when it turned to look at them and its large, spade-shaped ears twitched upwards.

Though they couldn't see its eyes, there was no doubt that it was staring at them, and it stood still and alert.

The small deer turned and bounded away. It moved so lightly that it almost looked like it was floating as it vanished down the far side of the hill.

"Okay," Xander said slowly, ennunciating each syllable as Peter closed the distance between them. "Deer near the ocean. Makes fuckin' sense to me."

"We're in another world, you do realize," Peter said; Xander rolled his eyes, which Peter ignored. "Things may be different--"

"Yeah, but point is when's the last time you heard of a deer on a beach?" Xander said, which was _possibly_ the weirdest question he'd ever asked. "Some shit just doesn't go together, is all I'm sayin'."   
That felt... pointed.

"... right," Peter said.

The deer was the only sign of life that seemed even remotely interested in them all day; even setting aside its being apparently out of place, that _did_ seem like it should be of _some_ concern, but what could they do about it at this point?   
They crested the top of the hill that the deer had been on, and they both stopped to look around -- for whatever good that did. The light was fading fast.

"Check it," Xander said, pointing into the distance.

A good ways away, close to the water, was another rolling hill, a bit taller than the one they were on now. Just past it, more obvious because it was opposite the sun, there was the faint, flickering orange glow of firelight being scattered by the fog.   
It was the first possible sign of--

Well, 'civilization' felt like it may have been a douchey way to put it.

Point is.

"What're the chances that whatever made that fire isn't going to try to kill us?" Xander mused out loud.

"I'd give it about fifty-fifty," Peter said dully. "Most of what's been out for our blood has either been a squirrel or uncontrollably feral, so I'd say we may stand a chance. We're going to have to figure _something_ out unless we want to sit around in the dark."

Xander, to his credit, seemed to agree, even if he didn't say as much. As such, they pressed on; it was the only thing they had seen that even remotely indicated a place to stop that might not get them killed.

Behind them, going unnoticed, the white deer gently padded its way back to the hill. It stared at the travelers' backs, then cast a glance inland.

 

***

It wasn't a terribly long walk to the hill they had seen, though the fact that they had to veer closer to the water -- and thus, walking through much looser sand -- made it a bit more of an ordeal. They left a trail of prints that were quickly eaten by the soft sand.   
The closer they got, the more apparent it was that the 'hill' they had seen was really a steep upcropping of rock.

Xander, in the lead, had made an executive decision to circle around the side that faced the water; Peter had, again, fallen a little ways behind. However, when Xander turned the corner, he stopped. Desmon seemed to be wanting to make a low whistle, but she couldn't really maneuver her mouth to do so, so she made a chirrupping noise instead.

"Ey, scarfy," Xander said over his shoulder. "Check it."

" _Scarfy_?" Peter repeated, incredulous. He picked up the pace a little bit to catch up to whatever it was that had inspired Xander to address him. "You couldn't come up with anything better than-- huh."

Firstly, what had seemed to be _the other side of the hill_ , where they had seen the firelight, was really the _inside_ of a sort of natural enclosure. It was like a hole had been punched out of a hill, leaving a crescent-shaped almost-ring of rock in its wake-- maybe fifty feet at its widest -- and most of it was taken up by a small, almost-circular little lagoon.   
Only a smallish gap, around fifteen feet across and -- by appearances -- a few feet deep connected this pool of water to the sea. Anyone who wanted to pass without getting their feet wet would have to follow the inner curve of the crescent, but that opened a whole new set of problems.

 

As though eaten away by thousands of years of water, the entire underside of the hill opposite the mouth had been carved out into an overhanging miniature cave of sorts. The fire whose light they had seen was a decently-sized bonfire, located on the thin strip of dry land between the mouth of the overhang and the lagoon water. Beyond the fire, there stood sturdy little huts made of rock, clay, and grass. More than two-dozen huts lay scattered inside the shelter provided by the hollowed-out hill, and the digimon who lived there were going about their business.

Most of the digimon were small. A couple seal-like digimon with white fur and purple markings talked with a small teal dolphin with goggles on its forehead; steel-grey crabs and white-and-blue seagulls sat near the fire, with a couple digimon who looked like living rocks sitting alongside. There were even couple outliers that looked like they didn't belong anywhere near the ocean: a calico cat sat alone, as though supervising; a large talking mushroom sat alongside a a green caterpillar the size of a small dog, attending to the apparent injuries of one of the crab-like digimon.

Despite the number of digimon, a great many of the huts looked as though they had been left in disrepair, while some of the others looked a bit like patchwork-- like they had nicked bits and pieces of abandoned huts to fix the ones being used.

"Wonder if they're hostile..." Banmon murmured quietly.

No sooner than she said this, one of the little seals pointed a big black claw in their direction. In a moment's notice, the four travelers had dozens of eyes on them, and Banmon immediately shrunk behind Peter with a little squeak.

In the time it took to blink, a pair of blue shapes that they hadn't seen before dropped from the ceiling of the overhanging rock. Two bat-like digimon came flying towards them; their bodies blue, their undersides faces white, and the membranes of their wings shocking red. They were smaller than Desmon and more lithe, but the most shocking difference was that each of their limbs -- wings included -- and their long tails were all tipped with a curved metal sickle. The two strange bats came to a stop immediately in front of the two humans and their digimon partners, peering at them with beady yellow eyes as they flapped in place.

"Hey, batty-buddies," Desmon-- who was still clinging to Xander's back, piggyback-style -- said, and Xander immediately clamped a hand around her muzzle.

"Who are you?" the first strange bat said.

"Who are you?" the second one said, staggered a half-second from the first, leading to a disquieting echo effect. When they opened their mouths, they seemed to open just a little bit too wide.

"We're just passing through," Peter said quickly, totally even, putting his hands up defensively.

"You don't look like any digimon we know," the first odd bat said, and let it go unstated that from here on out, whenever one spoke, the other echoed its words on a minor delay. "We know all the digimon that live around here."

"Well, we're not from around here," Xander said, shifting his weight on his feet. It was clear he was biting his tongue and wanted to say quite a bit more, in ruder terms, but he managed to restrain himself.

The strange digimon peered at them, their faces hard to read but seeming unconvinced.

"You look like dangerous intruders," the unfamiliar bats said, getting closer so they could get looks at Banmon and Desmon. Nobody was particularly thrilled about having these digimon right in their faces after the whole day spent undisturbed; both humans took half-steps back to gain some distance. The unfamiliar bats closed the space back up immediately, getting right in close.

Peter started slipping his hand towards his pocket, inching towards his D-Rive, and when he glanced to the side Xander had already managed to get his out, but they were both stopped by yet another new speaker, voice feminine and sharp.

"Pipismon!"

The bats scattered immediately, each one going in an opposite direction as they made beelines back. It was a flurry of wings and fur, and it took a moment for them to see what had spoken that had caused the odd bats to flee.

Coming towards them, running on all fours, was the calico cat that had been sitting alone; they assumed it had been her that had spoken. As she came to a stop in front of them, she glanced over her shoulder before standing upright.   
She was no bigger than either of their partner-digimon, her fur a mottled tortoiseshell canvas of orange, black, and white. She peered at hem with big golden eyes, and put her handpaws -- which were encased in brown paw-like gloves -- on her hips.

"My apologies," she said, her tone cool. "Points for enthusiasm, but they're not the most tactful. I'm Mikemon. Who are you?"

"We're just passing by," Peter said for the second time, before anyone could say anything more potentially-incriminating. Yes, they had maybe been hoping they could have stopped here, but...

Mikemon them a strange look. Her gaze fell pointedly on Banmon and Desmon; it was hard not to feel a little bit defensive, a little bit put on the spot. "Is that so," she said flatly.

"Damn straight it is," Xander said. "Is that a problem?"

"Can you please not--" Peter began to mumble, meaning something like _antagonize them_ , but he cut himself short.

Mikemon glanced at the device clutched in Xander's hand, which he was idly thumbing at; she looked from it to him, to Peter, to each of their digimon partners in turn.   
"You're travelers, then? Where are you from?"

"We--" Banmon tried, then stopped uncertainly.

The few seconds of silence that ensued when they realized they had no idea how to answer such a simple question were heavy. It was hard to feel not like it gave them away immediately, and the cat's unreadable face didn't help that feeling.   
"Right, then," Mikemon said when it was apparent no answer was forthcoming, shaking her head. "If you're passing through, then pass. Get away from here as quickly as you can, before you drag something in with you."

 

***

"Giving us the goddamn airport security treatment," Xander muttered, rolling his neck, "only to tell us to piss off. Pain in the dick."

They had gotten perhaps a half-mile's distance on the far side of the little village's enclosure. The sun had set fully behind them, with only the last lingering rays lighting their way, and the fog wasn't showing any sign of clearing.

"It looked like they've had better days," Peter said evenly, putting his hands in his pockets. "We shouldn't expect--"

"Weren't you whining like fifteen minutes ago about what we're going to do when it gets too dark to continue?" Xander said. "I'm not saying they have to give us a five-star hotel, but you could at least act a little bit annoyed."

"What good would that do us?" Peter said, exasperated, coming to a stop. " _You're_ the one always going on about how you can't change shit so why worry about it."

"Since when do you agree with _literally_ any part of my life philosophy?" Xander snapped over his shoulder, coming to a stop as well.

"Can we maybe not fight," Banmon mumbled, huddling down around Peter's shoulders, "guys...?"

"I'm just trying not to make this entire experience any more unpleasant than it has to be," Peter said, feeling a little guilty that he was ignoring his partner's complaint, but his frustration had been threatening to bubble over for a while.

"I donno, I think it'd be a lot more fun to make it more unpleasant," Xander said, his voice dripping in sarcasm. He sounded almost like he'd been waiting for this. He had gone so long without sniping at Peter, that the moment he had the slightest excuse, he was going for it. "For instance, are you wearing a fucking sweater vest under that jacket, and if so, who let you leave the house like that?"

"Oh my god," Peter muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.   
They had been doing so--

Well.

Not _well_.

"Xandie," Desmon said, tapping Xander on the head with one claw.

"Hey, _you're_ the one implying that being around me is necessarily unpleasant," Xander said, spreading his arms out. "May as well have fun with it."

"That's not what I was saying," Peter snapped back, feeling his body tense. "I just meant that we're already stuck somewhere very outside of our normal circumstances, and--"

"Peter," Banmon said, raising her voice just slightly.

"If that's what you meant-- shit, no, you wouldn't have said it even if you had," Xander said, curling his lip. "Sorry, I forgot for two seconds that you're allergic to saying what you mean."

"I am not," Peter said testily. "I said what I meant. We're in a foreign place right now, and I just think that it'd be a good idea to--"

"No, no, back up, it's that you're stuck here with me, which is the _worst possible future_ , yeah?" Xander said. "You haven't exactly been doing a great job of hiding it, but you haven't had the nads to just fuckin' say it--"

"Maybe because I knew that if I said _shit_ you'd just blow up and throw a goddamn fit--"

"Don't even fuckin' _start_!" Xander said, advancing. "Don't pull this martyr bullshit when you change your goddamn mind about what you want every ten minutes and then act like I'm bein' unreasonable!"

"Hey, guys," Desmon said.

"What do you call this, then, if not being unreasonable?"

"Guys?" Banmon said.

"Bein' pissed for a good damn reason! It's different!"

" _Guys!_ "   
Both Banmon and Desmon yelled at the same time, having exchanged knowing looks while they were being ignored by their bickering partners. They were uninterested in the petty squabbles of their friends, and there were more pressing issues at hand.

"What?" both humans said back at the same time, snapping out of their argument.   
It was clear that the argument hadn't even remotely been about what it had started as-- it was just two people boiling over, looking for anything to glom onto to vent those feelings out, and the moment they were shaken out of it a ton of tension slipped out of their bodies.

And then it re-entered them again. Banmon and Desmon were both pointing towards the sea, in the direction from whence they had come. They immediately saw what their frustration with each other had blinded them to.   
A large shape was rising out of the water far behind them, dark and massive enough to be seen even in these conditions. It was hard to make out in the low light and the fog, but they got an immediate sense of unease. They stood rooted to the spot as a massive shape rose, wings unfurling behind it. An unholy roar shook the air.

Like almost every other digimon they had encountered while wandering, the dark shape didn't seem particularly interested in them. It might have been a nice change of pace from how everything in a five-mile radius seemed to have it out for them back in Atlas Park, but--

"It's heading for the--" Banmon gestured as she tried to find the word-- village? Settlement? "It's heading towards those digimon..." She slipped from around Peter's shoulders, wringing her fabric hands.

"Right!" Desmon said, jumping off Xander's back and flapping her wings to maintain her place in the air. "I know they're not exactly on our good kid lists right now," Desmon said, looking a bit nervously at the dark shape, "but maaaybe we oughta--?"

"Mother _fucker_ ," Xander and Peter hissed in near-unison, cutting the bat off.   
Without consulting each other, they both took off at a run, tracing their steps back. Without saying so, they both felt the same instinct-- that whatever was going down, they should probably see if they had to intervene. The fact that they had been turned away didn't even register.

(Something niggled in both of their brains, something about gritting their teeth and doing it just because they knew they should.   
Man, when'd they get to be such boyscouts?)

Desmon and Banmon glanced at each other, nodded, and immediately took off after their partners.

 

***

"Shit," Mikemon hissed, lifting a paw to cover her eyes. She raised her voice to be heard over the clamor. "Everyone! Get to the tunnels and stay there! _Now_!"

"To the tunnels! To the tunnels!" the Pipismon yelled, flapping over the heads of the panicking villagers to help disseminate Mikemon's command. Digimon made a mad dash, abandoning their fire, their little stone huts, everything, and rushed towards the back of the stone overhang, where narrow tunnels led to too-shallow shelters. It was better than nothing.

They were more or less used to this, having faced drills and legitimate incidents more times than they cared to, but it always felt like the end of the goddamn world.

Mikemon had felt that the strangers would bring trouble, but she hadn't expected it this quickly. She supposed it might have been a coincidence, but... frankly, she'd know them anywhere, and she wasn't feeling particularly charitable.   
She caught a glimpse of something stark-white, standing on top of the hill, and she hissed through her teeth.

 

Of course. It made sense, if they were who she thought, that that damned deer would be--

A massive pulse of water crashed against the rocks, moved as the massive digimon from the sea advanced on them. Most of it was blocked by the rocks, but no small amount of it rushed at high pressure into the enclosure as Dagomon began to advance towards them. When she looked again, the white fawn had vanished.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.   
She had to figure something out, and quickly.

"Pipismon! Evacuate the area!" Mikemon yelled, cupping her hands over her mouth, and the twin bats immediately took off to sound an alarm to the surrounding beach.

 

***

Xander, Desmon, Peter, and Banmon all saw the white deer bound away from the little village as they drew closer. They couldn't help but feel that it wasn't a fantastic sign, but they had to prioritize.

Running across sand was nobody's idea of fun. Blue and white light erupted in the night, and in moments, Corymon was taking to the sky with Xander on her back, and Banshemon carried Peter in her arms.

"We're going to have to do some damned negotiation gymnastics to convince them we're not trying to gang up on them," Xander thought out loud, keeping his eye on the dark shape in the water that was getting, quite steadily and quite loudly, closer to shore.

They heard the voice of one of the Pipismon. It carried, almost painfully shrill but carrying surprisingly well for such a high sound, as it yelled: "Evacuate! Evacuate! Move inland! Move inland!"

"They've got quite a system in place, huh," Corymon said, frowning slightly as her ears twitched.

"Call me crazy, I feel this isn't the first time they've had shit go down," Xander muttered, sighing through his nose. Any further thought was curtailed by:

"Forbidden Trident!"

The voice of the sea monster rang out, rumbling and deep. It threw a three-pronged spear that sailed in a smooth arc, smashing into rock with an earth-shaking sound.   
They heard distnct sounds of panic, undercutting under the alarm that the Pipismon were still raising.

"Ride's over-- we're gonna have to distract it," Corymon said, loud enough for Banshemon to hear her.   
The ghost concurred, and in moments, the two humans' feet were on the sand once more, and they could take a moment to really take a look at what they were about to go up against. They were still a short distance from the actual lagoon itself, but they were close enough.

Up close, it was unnerving to see-- it was massive, easily rivalling Draugmon in size. It was humanoid, to a point; membranous wings unfurled behind it, and its limbs seemed to be comprised of tightly-coiled tentacles. A rosary of purple beads the size of beach balls hung around its neck, and chains were lashed around its tentacled arms. It seemed quite intently focused on the little enclosure, drawing closer with massive steps that shook the ground and stirred the sea around it. It was almost completely out of the water, and advancing with a single-minded intensity on the little lagoon.

Corymon and Banshemon were about to fly towards it, confront it, distract it, do _something that they'd figure out in post_ when--

"Neko Claw!"

An orangeish blur came soaring out of the mist, as Mikemon smashed claws-first into Banshemon's side. The ghost immediately crumpled, her body not substantial enough to withstand the hit, but she righted herself quickly.

"Get the fuck away!" Mikemon snarled, her lips curled to bare razor-sharp teeth, her hands raised in a ready-to-fight stance. "Your _friend's_ already--"

"Forbidden Trident!"

_Crash, rumble, shatter._

"We're not friends with _cthulhu fucker_ over here!" Xander said, gesturing ineffectually at the indeed-quite-cthuloid beast.

"We came back to see if we could... lend a hand," Banshemon said, holding her hands up in a whoa-there gesture.

"Do you think I'm stupid!?" Mikemon snapped, rounding on her.

"I-- no, I just--"

"I know exactly who you are," Mikemon said, pointing an accusatory claw at them each in turn. "You're _them_. I already _knew_ I recognized you, but--" she curled her lip even further. "But I was willing to let you go along your way if you weren't going to bother us, but fuck, look how well that worked!"

"We're not with-- whatever that is," Peter insisted, casting a cautious glance at the beast, who was almost upon the little enclosure. "We came back because we thought we could try to help--"

Mikemon wasn't listening.   
"And _then_ you have the gall to come back, digivolved, and act like I won't see through it? How stupid do you think I am? Nikukyuu Punch!"   
The cat launched herself at Corymon, her paws flying in a rapid series of punches. The bat, unsurprisingly, leapt backwards and out of range before the attack connected.

"I remember who you are!" Mikemon spat, pointing an accusatory claw at her and Banshemon in turn.

"That makes one of us," Corymon said, unable to stop herself. "Look, this whole diplomacy thing isn't my strong suit, gotta admit," she said, glancing out at the massive sea monster. "Fukkit." With that, she flew towards the monstrous digimon, wind beginning to whip around her.

"Corymon--!" Banshemon yelped, and before she entirely knew what she was doing, she threw herself right after her, her claws beginning to glow.

Mikemon's pupils restricted, she looked after them. She faltered slightly, but she breathed heavily, looking around almost frantically.

"Do you mind explaining what's going on?" Xander said, not taking his eyes off of Corymon as she, cloaked in a swirling orb of air, threw herself at the cthulhu-like digimon, pulling out of her dive to send the sphere flying at it.

"Hurricane Blitz!"   
It had very little effect-- the massive digimon didn't even seem to notice it, and Corymon looped around, teeth gritted.

"Banshee's Call!"   
Banshemon's flurry of white ghosts materialized from thin air around her as she flew. Her attack, too, had as much effect as flies on the back of a bull-- maybe a little annoying, but it didn't even seem to notice them in any serious way.   
The beast seemed quite focused on destroying what was in front of it, in a way not _entirely_ unfamiliar.

"What are they playing at," Mikemon muttered, speaking to herself. She glanced over her shoulder, and found herself praying that the tunnels were holding. She couldn't check, not with these interlopers on her-- she hoped they hadn't thought she'd left them to die--

"They're not _playing at_ anything," Xander said. "We came back because we didn't figure _that fucker_ ," he gestured, open-palmed, at the giant monster, "was part of your evening plans!"

"Don't play dumb--!" Mikemon began.

"Oh my god can I just make a shirt that just says _no I'm not playing dumb holy fuck just stop playing coy and tell me what's going on,_ " Xander muttered, pressing his fingers into the bridge of his nose.

Corymon flew past the monster's face, lashing out with the stinger on her tail. This at least got its attention, and it turned, swiping out at her with one tentacled arm like it was trying to swat at a fly. As it turned, Banshemon rushed in, slashing out with glowing claws. They phased almost harmlessly through the beast's hide, but it swiped with its other arm at her as well, not even attempting to turn to look at her. It took a huge chunk out of the rock, instead, with an ear-shattering noise.

The sound echoed, and Mikemon spoke again.

"The white deer follows the Whisperer, and Dagomon follows the white deer," she said slowly. "Every time. More of us die, and nothing changes. Our numbers just keep dwindling. Things don't change. The best you can do is hunker down and try to weather it."   
And even so, Corymon and Banshemon were making a damned valiant effort...

(Even though Xander and Peter had been tunnel-focused on continuing to argue with each other, their partners had been quick to put any of _their_ differences aside to help.)

"Black Stinger!"

"Banshee's Call!"

Mikemon didn't even look as the two attacks, again, succeded only at mildly irritating Dagomon. She gritted her teeth and stared at the ground, muttering something about _why are they of all--_

"Why shouldn't they be?" Xander said, folding his arms. It wasn't meant for him to hear, but since when would something like that stop him? "You've done a pretty bad job of convincing us of anything."

"Because people don't change, either," Mikemon said matter of factly, but--

"Oh, fuck off," Xander blurted right back. "They're trying to help and you're still pitching a bitch fit? Fuck _that_ , I'm not waiting around for this shit anymore," he said, with even more profanity than usual. With that, he took off at a run towards where the digimon were fighting, pulling his D-Rive out.

Peter hesitated for a moment, looked between Xander's back and Mikemon, and--   
He followed in Xander's footsteps, pulling his D-Rive out and breaking into a full run. Corymon had probably been right; maybe diplomacy wasn't their strong suit.   
But at this point, was it more about doing the right thing for its own sake, or for spite? (It's really funny how rarely that makes a difference.)

It wasn't like they had a lot of options here-- they could try to drag Dagomon away (which was going _so_ swimmingly), or they could--

...

Well.

Corymon glanced over her shoulder to see the humans running their way; Mikemon, behind them, stood stock-still, watching.   
If Mikemon was telling the truth... then, hell, she probably had a pretty good reason to be grumpy about them, but at this point, it was too late to back out. They had already gotten involved, so they may as well see it through, right? In for a penny, in for a pound?

Banshemon, for her part, was a bit too preoccupied with keeping the sea-monster at least _vaguely_ occupied to notice the humans on the approach, let alone consider the possibility of having to evolve. She hadn't seen any of the villagers-- they must have gotten out some other way. Tunnels?   
(She felt an uncomfortable, familiar sort of sinking feeling at the very thought of being trapped in the dark-- but she didn't think now was the time to examine that.)

Corymon gritted her teeth as she gathered dark energy in her stinger. "Black Stinger!" she cried, firing off the arrowhead-like shots in quick succession. Dagomon rumbled as the attack struck it, the monster turning its crimson eyes on her.

"Thousand Whip!" Dagomon roared, lashing out with one many-tentacled arm. As it swung its limb, the tentacles separated like the tails of a flog, and it struck out with tremendous force. Corymon hadn't been expecting a full retaliation-- either they were starting to wear it down (unlikely), or they were starting to piss it off.

And anyway, the fact that she wasn't expecting it meant she took the brunt of the many-tentacled strike, and was sent flying. She would have crashed into the (rapidly-crumbling) rock overhang, if not for Banshemon immediately shooting after her. Banshemon wasn't large enough to properly _catch_ Corymon, but she was able to slow her down and lower her down to the ground.

"Thanks," Corymon said gruffly, nodding her thanks as she righted herself. Her ears twitched as she looked over her shoulder. Had she seen something moving behind her?

She didn't want to risk too long looking away from Dagomon, but--   
Peering out from a crack, almost impossible to see, she saw one of the little dolphin-like digimon. It realized quickly that it had been noticed and ducked back into the crack.

"Shit," Corymon muttered quietly, glancing to Banshemon, who had -- judging from how she was looking at the same place that Corymon had been -- seen it as well.

"This isn't going to work," Banshemon said, turning her palms upwards. They had barely put a scratch on Dagomon-- it was definitely an ultimate level.

"We're kinda running out of options," Corymon agreed, nodding. Dagomon struck out at the hillside, crumbling it handily into rubble, and it was impossible not to feel it.   
It must have been even worse for the digimon in hiding. Tunnels and cracks and shallow little dug-outs; it was hardly shelter, it was barely even _hiding_ , and it was impossible not to feel a little bit responsible.

After all, Mikemon seemed pretty keen on blaming them, and she knew a hell of a lot more than they did.   
(A lot of digimon had been pretty keen on blaming them, come to think of it.)

"Our buddies are coming towards us," Corymon said, glancing to Banshemon. "We're going to have to take the risk and evolve, I think."

Banshemon looked like she was about to protest, but she looked at Dagomon, and--

"Neko Claw!"

Mikemon's voice resounded loud and clear as the white-orange streak came tearing tearing up over what remained of one side of the rocky hill. Mikemon leapt for Dagomon, dwarfed completely by it, but going in claws-first. Her attack glanced off Dagomon's leg harmlessly, but she followed through, skidding to a stop in the soft sand.   
For all she had been hanging back mere moments before, she seemed to have had her own change of heart, for whatever reason.

"The hell are you standing around for!?" Mikemon yelled, looking over at the two digimon. "Are you trying to help, or were your friends just blowing smoke up my ass!?"

Banshemon and Corymon exchanged glances and nodded solemnly, knowing they were on the same page.

Both bat and ghost took into the air like bullets, whipping winds and a flurry of white ghosts accompanying them respectively.

"Hurricane Blitz!"

"Banshee's Call!"

The two attacks had almost no effect on Dagomon, as usual, but once again, the cthulhu-like monster seemed less than charitable.

"Thousand Whip!" it roared, and both Corymon and Banshemon braced themselves.

"Nikukyuu Punch!"

Mikemon flung herself at the tentacled arm, her paws flying wildly as she put her everything into countering Dagomon's whipping-tentacle arm.   
This went... about as well as you might expect it to. The cat was smacked out of the air like a fruit fly and was sent tumbling into the sand. Still, it did its purpose-- Dagomon seemed distracted by the attack, and halted its own.   
The little cat -- too little by far to be going toe to toe with such a monstrous beast -- met the tentacles with her paws, and Dagomon seemed satisfied that it had hit _something_ , and reared its arm back. Its fanned-out tentacles re-formed into one contiguous arm as it pulled back.

Xander and Peter came running up at just the right moment to see this happen.

The two humans glanced at each other, and without words, they made a beeline for where Mikemon had landed, but they could see her try to right herself and stand -- however shakily -- back up before they reached her.

Corymon and Banshemon glanced at each other as well and nodded. Without words, despite their differences, and despite their partners' differences, they were all stuck in this stupid situation together. They couldn't help but feel responsible-- Mikemon knew more than they did, after all.

Man.

They just prayed that their partners being on-hand would be enough to keep it from going way, way, _way_ worse. They were trying to help, after all.

"Hurricane Blitz!"

"Spirit Ripper!"

Corymon pulled out of her charge moments before she smashed into Dagomon, while Banshemon dragged her claws through the monster's arm as she rushed past it. Dagomon hissed as the sphere of air and the white claws impacted it, but the two champion-level digimon split apart quickly. Banshemon parted to the left, while Corymon soared to the right, both dropping down near the ground.   
Dagomon began to turn, trying to decide which of the two to attack first, its trident appearing in one hand while the other split apart into innumerable tentacles.

Banshemon prepared herself, feeling a strange sense of familiarity awaken deep inside her, like she had faced this situation before, and she realized with an uneasy feeling that she probably had at some point. She felt the desire to run away, to turn her back on digimon who had turned their backs on her.   
_Not again._   
With that two-word thought, Banshemon prepared herself, and a white glow began to creep up from her claws and the tip of her tail.

Corymon closed her eyes for just a moment, feeling... it wasn't resignation so much as acceptance. It didn't matter why any of this was happening, as far as she was concerned; it knowing or not knowing wouldn't change what she--   
Pardon. What _they_ had to do right now, to help, to at least try to right some unknown wrong.   
A blue glow began to slowly consume Corymon's body, starting from the tips of her claws and the edges of her wings.

Over the rumble of Dagomon's footsteps and the dull throbbing roar of the sea, that familiar glitchy squeal cut like a knife. Xander and Peter's D-Rives burst into their respective colours of light. All four of them steeled themselves, as if they had all known this was the inevitable outcome of their getting involved.   
(Even so, they had chosen to get involved, right? Too late to do anything else-- right now, they were here, and they had to do _something_. This village hadn't done a damn thing wrong, and they had made the damn choice to come back and help, because it was the right goddamn thing to do.)

Both Banshemon and Corymon, independent of each other but fully certain that the other was feeling it too, felt like this was a choice that was long overdue.

Dagomon tossed its head in search of the source of the noise, but as soon as it did so, the glitchy noise died out. It still rang in their ears as the light continued to to flow over the bat and the ghost alike, the negative space formed by crisp circuit lines filled in by blackness.

 

"Banshemon, conduction evolve to..."

White and black swirled around Banshemon, the white almost blindingly bright and the black seeming absolute. As it engulfed her, it did not distort, staying intact and whole even as it shrunk around the ghost digimon, until, in a shower of light, it burst, revealing a digimon quite unlike the naga-like Onryomon.

A long white robe, decorated with black and gold much like Banshemon's arms, was draped around her. The sleeves were almost as long as the rest of the robe, obscuring her hands as her arms came to rest at her sides. The robe split apart at the waist, revealing black smoke bound by bandages into the shape of a slim human lower half-- but her legs were bent and her knees were drawn close to her chest, almost as though she were sitting in mid-air, allowing her long robe to trail, almost but not quite touching the ground.

Banshemon's skull mask remained, framed by long white hair that wholly covered the left side of her face, while the lower half of the humanoid face underneath was wrapped in bandages. A pin-prick of white fire glimmered behind the mask to serve as an eye.   
Her hood was darker in shade now, the tail of it extending like a wind-sock, and a pale-gold flame danced above the tip, matching the necklace of gold and black orbs that rested around her neck.

She popped into the air and somersaulted, her robe, sleeves, hair, and hood all trailed behind her; the golden flame at the tip of her hood left a trail of floating embers in its wake. She fell back to 'stick the landing', so to speak, with not a single hair out of place. She lowered her legs, falling into a posture that looked like she was standing on tip-toe, even though she floated several feet off the ground.   
"Syrenamon!" she said, her voice carrying a lilting lightness that Peter had never heard his partner speak with before.

 

And on the other hand...

 

"Corymon, conduction evolve to..."

Vivid blue light cut through the blackness of the sphere surrounding Corymon, zipping up and down and around almost manically, but keeping in straight and clean lines. The orb grew and burst apart; much like Banshemon turning into Syrenamon, Corymon's evolution left behind a much more humanoid digimon than had been there a moment before, though... well.

Her new form stood at over ten feet, with huge, dragon-like wings spreading out behind her back, huge blunt orange claws adorning their 'palms'. Her long scorpion tail thrashed, almost entirely unchanged from Corymon's, and the same scaly skin as comprised her tail now covered her forearms and legs from the shin down. With two fingers and a thumb per hand and three toes per foot, each digit was tipped in an orange claw not unlike the ones on her wings. It was difficult to tell if she was wearing tattered dark-blue pants, or if that was simply the colour her fur was below the waist; either way, she on powerful haunches, with a stylized skull and crossbones of sorts emblazoned on her right leg.

Bandages encircled her chest, while a white ruff of long fur surrounded her neck. Massive black leather bracelets and cuffs -- some spiked, some not -- encircled her wrists and ankles alike, while two similar belts sat around her waist, one put on properly, and the other hanging at an angle. Golden hoop earrings decorated her ears, which were now a bit more proportionate to her head, and from between those ears, a wild waterfall of white dreadlocks fell, barely held in place by a dark-navy bandana headband.

She landed on the ground with a _thud_ and a cloud of sand as the light of her evolution cleared away.   
"Radiomon!" she cried, lifting one arm and pointing to the sky, her other hand clenched into a fist, the spitting image of a rock star-- if a rock-star was a twelve foot tall bat monster.

 

"Shit," Xander said, the word coming out half from surprise and half from relief. Peter said nothing, lips pressed tight, but they both read with the same expression--   
_That went way better than I was expecting it to._

"Well, damn, take a look at this," Radiomon said, kicking into the air with one powerful jump, her wings beating to keep her hoveriing in place. Syrenamon floated with much less motion, poised like a ballerina, and she glanced over at the bat.   
Though they couldn't see her face and though it was dark, Syrenamon smiled with her eyes in an unmistakable way. She laughed a gentle, quite faint, almost musical laugh before she bounded forward, feather-light on her feet.

 

***

Some distance away, the white deer watched on from atop a hill further inland.

She turned her head and bounded away, deciding that she had seen enough.   
Dagomon had been nothing more than a tool -- barely more than an empty shell, at this point -- and she felt no sorrow at its inevitable loss, but this was still an... unpleasant development.

 

***

Dagomon took a couple haphazard steps backwards, sloshing water and crushing rock under its heavy feet as it did so. Radiomon and Syrenamon were still much smaller than it, but it seemed to know that, so to speak, the tide had begun to change, and it faced them, eyes wild and feral. It prepared to attack, but it was too slow on the take.

"Dancing Flame!"

In the blink of an eye, Syrenamon was gone, but for the small yellow fire that had flickered at the end of her hood. The ember jumped erratically, almost hypnotizing in its movements.   
This was quite deliberate, as in the half-second that Dagomon's crimson eyes were fixed on the golden flame, Syrenamon reappeared at point-blank. Her feet were engulfed in a cold white fire, and in a one-two elegant movement, she slammed one foot and then the other into Dagomon's chest. Despite their size disparity, Dagomon stumbled backwards towards the sea, taking a nice chunk of rock out with it.

"Sorry about that," Syrenamon said to nobody in particular, feinting backwards with an elegant leap.

"Forbidden--!" Dagmon began, starting to summon a trident in its hand, but it was interrupted.

"Signal Overload!" Radiomon cried, and with every syllable, her voice raised exponentially in pitch and volume until it shook the air. Peter, Xander, and Mikemon clapped their hands over their ears, feeling if it got even a little bit louder their eardrums would burst, but then it seemed to cut out, as though someone had unplugged her mic.

At least, for them-- by all appearances, Dagomon giving up creating its trident to slapping its tentacled hands over ears that may or may not have even existed, paralyzed by the sound.

In that second of paralysis, Radiomon lunged forward, her claws glowing with blue energy as she, too, saw fit to kick Dagomon-- except she went straight for the face, kicking it soundly in its octopus-like head. Dagomon stumbled backwards yet again, ejected from what remained of the little enclosure and into the shallows of the sea.

Dagomon did not seem to appreciate this.   
"Thousand Whip!" it roared, both of its tentacled arms fanning out into innumerable tentacles. Syrenamon and Radiomon both pulled back, preparing to be struck, but no such thing happened. Instead of aiming its attack at the two digimon it was fighting, Dagomon slammed its tentacles down into the ground. Water, sand, and loose rock were sent flying. The ground shook as Dagomon's tentacles slammed into it.

Mikemon looked frantically over her shoulder, hit with a surge of fear that her villagers' tunnels and hide-out caves would be threatened. They weren't particularly deep, after all--

Dagomon lifted a tentacled arm, preparing to repeat the motion, and both Syrenamon and Radiomon were ready.

"Dead Air!" Radiomon yelled, holding her hands out in front of her. In the space it took to breathe, the air went still-- completely, almost eerily still. There was no breeze, no movement of the swirling fog, nothing moving in the air at all -- except for a swirling sphere of wind and energy that was forming between her claws. It was hard not to feel like she was stealing all the movement in the air for her attack-- and indeed, this is exactly what she was doing.

"Siren's Song!"   
In the stillness created by Radiomon's attack, Syrenamon's attack rang out all the clearer. The attack name gave way to a haunting melody, and as the notes escaped her mouth, so too did a shimmering white fog. It began to swirl around her, fluid and hypnotic, and the more she sang, the more of the fog accumulated.

And within the same second, the same instant, Radiomon hurled her sphere of wind and Syrenamon stopped singing.

Radiomon's attack swirled and roared like a tsunami force had been held back and was trying to rush forth as it flew towards Dagomon. The white fog around Syrenamon, the moment her song ended, surged forward, taking on a serpentine and almost-familiar form, with long hair and clawed hands. The ethereal shape and the sphere of wind both collided with Dagomon, one after another, and the beast staggered backwards, beginning to shift and glitch.

In a shower of bright light, Dagomon burst into particles of data.   
Radiomon and Syrenamon were not able to hold their forms for long. Both floated in place where they had launched their attacks, as though waiting for the sea monster to get a a surprise second wind, but when none made itself apparent, they began to glow, shining like blue and white stars in the foggy night.

Xander and Peter exchanged brief glances with each other and said nothing as they both ran underneath their partners. As Banmon and Desmon drifted and slightly-inelegantly flapped -- respectively -- their ways down to ground level, their partners caught them in their arms.

As the last of the light faded, the wind began to howl in the distance, and the roar of the sea felt almost too-quiet in comparison to the havoc that had just been wreaked. More than half of the little stone hill was completely wrecked, practically levelled; Dagomon's tentacles had practically dug trenches in the sand that sea-water had been quick to rush into and fill.   
Some of the more shoddily-put-together huts had crumbled, but miraculously, it seemed like most of the dwellings had been left more or less unscathed-- no doubt, thanks to the interference of bat and ghost.

As digimon began to peer out of their hiding places, Mikemon approached the two pairs of partners.

She was slightly awkward in offering them a place to sleep for the night, and they were slightly awkward in accepting.

 

***

It was weird to think that the roar of the sea not a hundred feet away counted as _quiet_ , but after the hectic evening they'd had, it was downright tranquil. Most of the village was asleep, worn out by their panic and fear, and so only very few were stirring-- and no prizes for guessing who.

"We'll have to start rebuilding and scavenging in the morning," Mikemon said, sighing as she glanced around.

She had granted use of one of the abandoned huts to the four travelers. It was sparsely-furnished, with a straw-packed futon against either side being about the extent of it, but it was dry, if perhaps a little dusty, and safe enough.

"I'm sorry we can't really offer to help," Peter said, "but--"

Mikemon cut him off with a head-shake. "It's best if you move on as quickly as possible. You've your own problems to deal with," she said, then added, "and your own problems that come with you."

Helped though they had, they couldn't deny that -- at least from Mikemon's point of view -- they were still, ultimately, responsible for the incident.   
Fair enough.

She had seemed reluctant, every time they had asked, to divulge more about Banmon and Desmon themselves. They had just been forced to accept that they weren't going to get a full story out of her.   
Perhaps it was unfair to expect a _so tell me my own backstory_ out of the first digimon they met in this world.   
But...

"I know you're not going to tell us about," Xander said, and he motioned at Desmon and Banmon, "-- but could you maybe explain what the fuck was up with the deer?"

"Yeah, like, that thing was freaky," Desmon said, nodding enthusiastically. "Why were you so sure we were with it?"

Mikemon blanched slightly, but she seemed to agree that she at least owed them that much explanation.

"You're the refugees," she said, matter of factly, the first time she had been forthright about this. "Correct?"

No use hiding it, they supposed, and Banmon and Desmon both nodded.

"Then you follow-- followed, at least -- the Whisperer. The white deer does, as well, though I'll take a wild guess and assume that she's rather more devout than you've turned out to be." She sounded slightly skeptical, but she pressed on. "The white deer follows the Whisperer, and she follows disaster. She signals that whatever is happening is because we..." Mikemon trailed off. "Because we still hold out. A mocking statement that this could have been avoided."

The four travelers looked at each other curiously, but said nothing. Mikemon continued.

"We're so close to the barrens all that we should really just up and move, before it's too late," she said, glancing out the door, "but it's dangerous. We're not fighters. Anyone who would have been is already gone, and it's not like any of us are going to digivolve anytime soon."   
She cast her eyes downwards, her voice full of a distant bitterness.

"Why not?" Desmon said, tilting her head.

Mikemon looked at her with a mix of annoyance and bewilderment, then sighed. "Right. You've been away," she said. "Everything stopped when our world was severed. We don't digivolve naturally anymore. The only digimon who digivolve do so because they've accepted power from the Whispers, and every digimon who does that winds up mad or dead."   
She looked at her paws.   
"And when we die, we don't come back anymore."


End file.
